Raffles were shared on Facebook featuring attractive prizes such as PlayStations, NBA tickets, and firearms from a local retailer.
However, authorities later discovered that the individual organizing these contests lacked the proper licensing to sell firearms and had a criminal history.
During the investigation by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the man claimed that the owner of the gun shop was aware of his past and assisted him regardless—an assertion the shop owner denied.
The ATF examined the records of the shop, known as The Outdoorsman’s Attic in Sheridan, Colorado, and uncovered that the owner had manipulated his documentation to conceal the felon’s involvement.
Due to these infractions and various other issues, the ATF revoked The Outdoorsman’s Attic’s license two years prior, during former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Currently, under President Donald Trump, the shop has resumed operations.
It is not the only establishment to reopen.
A USdaily investigation revealed that nearly a dozen stores, which had their licenses revoked during Biden’s tenure, have been permitted to sell firearms again under Trump’s administration. This shift reflects a more lenient stance on gun regulation, including the discontinuation of a Biden-era “zero-tolerance” initiative that aimed to penalize the most serious violators among gun retailers. In at least five cases, the Trump Justice Department dismissed lawsuits where gun shops were contesting their license revocations from the Biden administration, allowing them to resume firearm sales.
The ATF confirmed it encouraged dealers to reapply for licenses that were lost under Biden and issued new licenses to at least 23 shops, although it did not disclose the names of these firearm retailers.
Among the businesses that received new licenses during the Trump administration were those previously flagged for significant violations. Two shops had received multiple warnings indicating that at least 25 firearms sold were linked to crime scenes within a year, as per ATF records analyzed by USdaily. From those two establishments, at least 175 crime guns were recovered between 2021 and 2024, according to the warning letters sent to them.
Former ATF officials expressed concern regarding these businesses regaining their licenses, noting that shops that neglect background checks or sell to straw purchasers contribute significantly to violent crime nationwide.
“We focused intently on inspecting gun stores that were sources of crime guns,” said Marianna Mitchem, who previously led the inspection division before departing from the ATF in May 2025. She is now an adviser for Everytown, a gun violence prevention organization.
She highlighted that straw purchasers and unlicensed dealers are primary channels through which traffickers obtain firearms, stating, “Ultimately, ATF is not concentrating on firearms trafficking anymore… which is disheartening because our citizens and communities will bear the consequences.”
Robert Leider, the ATF chief counsel, refuted claims that the agency has diminished its oversight of gun dealers.
“We are taking serious action against corrupt dealers and pursuing significant charges when they are discovered,” he stated to USdaily. “We are also addressing straw buyers earnestly. The distinction is that this administration does not perceive a conflict between combating violent crime and easing restrictions on law-abiding citizens.”
Leider mentioned that for those gun shops that had their licenses revoked under Biden’s policies and reapplied, “We conducted a thorough legal and factual assessment. Some of these cases involved technical violations, but not to the extent that gun control proponents have suggested.”
The Outdoorsman’s Attic opted not to provide comments. Other shops that regained their licenses under Trump contended that they had been unfairly targeted by the ATF during Biden’s administration.
“We were not distributing firearms to individuals who shouldn’t have them or intentionally bypassing background checks to complete a sale,” explained Will Boswell, the owner of The Tactical Edge, a Tennessee shop that lost its license in 2023 but regained it last fall after reapplying under Trump. “We have never acted in that manner and will never do so. However, the ATF’s portrayal made us feel like criminals.”
Since Trump assumed office last year, the administration has significantly reduced the number of ATF inspectors and curtailed their ability to recommend revocation of licenses for dealers breaching federal gun laws, as previously reported by USdaily. The ATF has also diminished transparency in its enforcement efforts by removing inspection reports and revocation notices from its website.
Leider stated that this decision was made because “the reports were being misused by advocacy groups to single out specific businesses.”
The ATF reported conducting “approximately 8,630” compliance inspections of gun dealers in 2025, leading to the revocation of 50 federal firearms licenses—1,066 fewer inspections and about one-fourth of the licenses revoked compared to Biden’s last fiscal year. It remains unclear how many of those inspections or revocations occurred before Trump took office on January 20.
‘A new era of reform’
In 2021, the Biden administration initiated an “enhanced enforcement” or zero-tolerance policy, which empowered ATF inspectors to recommend quicker revocation of dealer licenses for serious infractions, such as neglecting background checks, selling firearms to felons, falsifying documents, and disregarding law enforcement requests for gun tracing.
Even during Biden’s administration, some gun shops that had their licenses revoked were occasionally able to continue operating by obtaining a new license under a relative or business associate’s name, according to USdaily’s findings.
In August 2024, the ATF revoked the license of Southern Maryland Pawn Brokers, as documented by ATF records. Instead of contesting the revocation, owner Brett Smith merged the business into a second shop and transferred the license to his daughter’s name.
“We made several mistakes,” Smith acknowledged in an interview, while also arguing that “the Biden administration was excessively strict with their punctuation and details; it was all administrative and paperwork issues.”
Nevertheless, during Biden’s final year in office, the ATF revoked licenses for 195 gun dealers, marking the highest number in over two decades.
Although these revocations represented less than a quarter of one percent of the total federal licenses possessed by dealers, pawnshops, gun manufacturers, and importers, some industry critics voiced strong objections. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a firearms industry trade group, accused the Biden administration of pursuing a “politically motivated agenda to eliminate firearm retailers.”
Within two months of Trump’s inauguration, the zero-tolerance policy was abolished, and shops that had lost their licenses under this policy were invited to reapply. Concurrently, the DOJ began to drop cases initiated by shops challenging the revocations.
The ATF announced it was initiating “a new era of reform,” aimed at “reducing unnecessary burdens on law-abiding businesses and citizens” while “protecting American communities from violent crime.”
The gun industry welcomed this shift, while advocates for gun safety cautioned that it may result in more firearms being accessible to individuals who should not have them.
“Crime guns predominantly originate in the legal market before being funneled into the illegal market,” stated Josh Scharff, general counsel for the advocacy organization Brady: United Against Gun Violence. “We require dealers who adhere to the law, and those whose licenses have been revoked do not fit that description.”
The ATF has not disclosed any details regarding which specific dealers have been reinstated through its amnesty initiative.
To determine which dealers have resumed business, CNN utilized an AI tool to compare the federal firearms licenses that were revoked under Biden with those that have been reissued under Trump. USdaily then independently confirmed these findings and identified which of these stores had the same or related ownership.
USdaily also examined warning notices known as “Demand Letter 2” (DL2 letters) sent to shops that had 25 or more firearms recovered at crime scenes in the previous year, within three years of their sale, under a Biden-era directive.
The Trump administration discontinued that program.
Leider, the ATF general counsel, downplayed the importance of the DL2 letters, telling USdaily, “If you sell sufficient firearms, you will likely end up on that list.” He stated that ATF paused the program “following a campaign by gun-control advocates to target the dealers involved.”
Back in business
The Outdoorsman’s Attic faced issues with the ATF when an inspector discovered that William Paddock, its proprietor, repeatedly assisted Leonel Castillo, a convicted felon, in conducting illegal online gun raffles. According to court documents, the ATF alleged that Castillo purchased firearms from the shop, which were then sent directly to the raffle winners—essentially enabling Castillo to distribute firearms without a license. An ATF investigator also testified that Paddock manipulated records to indicate that 15 guns provided by Castillo for the shop to send to winners were acquired by two other individuals.
An ATF agent testified that Castillo, currently serving a 30-month federal prison sentence for illegal firearm dealing, told him that he had shown Paddock videos of the illegal raffles he was running and had informed Paddock of his felon status.
The ATF revoked the store’s federal firearms license in November 2024 after uncovering 16 breaches of federal law.
Paddock contested the revocation in federal court; last August, after Trump took office, the DOJ dismissed the case, and the ATF issued a new license to the shop.
Paddock did not provide comments. In court documents, he claimed that Castillo misled ATF investigators. During the revocation hearing, Paddock testified that he was unaware that assisting Castillo with weapon raffles for profit was illegal.
Other shops that are now back in business include: Wessel Gun Shop in Warren, Michigan, which received DL2 letters for four consecutive years (indicating at least 100 crime guns were traced to that shop during that time); and Tampa Tactical Supply in Riverview, Florida, linked to at least 75 crime guns over a three-year duration.
Posey Guns & Pawn in Cleveland, Tennessee, had its license revoked in March 2023 after the ATF determined it knowingly sold a firearm to a minor. The shop also failed to wait for the results of a background check before selling a gun to a customer who had been involuntarily committed to a mental health institution or deemed mentally ill. The owners committed 383 violations while filling out gun transfer forms, according to ATF findings, and falsified records four times, including twice in attempts to conceal two missing Glock pistols. When ATF investigator Kevin Levesque contacted the alleged buyer of the Glocks, the individual stated he had not purchased the firearms.
Gun shop owner Terry Posey initiated legal action against the ATF, but in August 2023, a federal district court ruled that allowing the shop to reopen “could cause substantial harm to others” due to its violations posing a threat to public safety.
In April 2024, another federal district court judge ruled in favor of the ATF, determining that the evidence of willful violations was “so one-sided” that no reasonable jury could rule otherwise.
Posey Guns & Pawn is now operating again under a new federal firearms license issued to Blake Posey, Terry Posey’s son. Blake Posey chose not to comment on the ATF’s revocation of his father’s license, stating that those issues were outside his purview.
The Tactical Edge in Tennessee encountered numerous violations as ATF conducted inspections of the shop three times within four years.
When the shop appealed its license revocation in 2022, an ATF hearing officer denied the appeal, citing concerns regarding the failure to perform background checks, while the owners described it as a “mistake” and “human error.”
The owners filed a lawsuit in federal court, but their case was dismissed in December 2023.
By October 2025, however, the owners announced on Facebook that they were back in business, using a clip from The Hangover, featuring Bradley Cooper’s character exclaiming, “We are back, baby. We are f**king back!”
