DALLAS — On September 26, ATF Director Robert Cekada, joined by Chief Counsel Robert Leider, addressed a well-armed and slightly skeptical audience of American gun rights activists at the 2026 Gun Rights Policy Conference in Dallas, Texas.
The 41st edition of the conference, sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation, was historic in that the ATF leadership opened the robe, answering challenging questions from Mark Walters (host of Armed American Radio) with an admirable degree of transparency, and even offering an apology at the end.
The full interview is in the embedded YouTube video below. We also provide timestamps for each of the questions asked for easy reference.
- 1:40 What brought you into public service, and what ultimately led you to your present role?
- 7:48 If you had to describe the new direction of the ATF in one sentence, what would it be?
- 11:08 People should be able to read a statute or regulation and reasonably determine whether conduct is lawful without having to hire an attorney or wait for an ATF classification letter. Can you explain how that would change things for the community?
- 15:09 What’s your message to federal firearms licensees – not only in this room but around the country – who want to cooperate with law enforcement but fear that anything they say or do in the course of their daily business might later be used against them? How do you respond to those FFLs and put their minds at ease?
- 21:34 What safeguards are being developed to prevent ATF from effectively creating new criminal prohibitions through guidance letters, classification decisions, or shifting interpretations that FFLs can actually know and trust? How do those protections hold up even if the midterms don’t go the way we hope?
- 25:41 Have Heller, McDonald, and Bruen changed the legal framework ATF must use when interpreting federal firearms statutes? Looking back now that the courts have had time to apply them, what has actually changed?
- 28:29 Your thoughts on that? (elections, the judiciary, and the Senate)
- 36:15 Complete this sentence: “Law-abiding American gun owners should judge us by…”
