To curb the use of U.S.-made civilian guns in crimes and human rights abuses abroad, the Biden administration will require exporters to better vet their customers and tighten sales to 36 countries deemed “high-risk” for illicit diversion of semiautomatic firearms, according to people briefed on the plan.
The new regulations—the most sweeping in decades—also cut the length of export licenses from four years to one and give the State Department greater authority to block sales. The Commerce Department on Friday is scheduled to release the 150-page regulation, which agency officials have outlined to advocacy groups and policymakers on Capitol Hill.
The plan resulted from the department’s review of its support for the U.S. gun industry—a process that began after a Bloomberg News investigation last year linked record civilian gun exports to higher rates of gun crime in countries including Guatemala, Brazil and Canada. A Commerce Department spokesman declined to comment on the new regulations when contacted on Thursday.
During the past decade, Republican and Democratic administrations alike pitched U.S.-made guns as a retail product in some of the most violence-prone countries in the world. The investigation documented how legally exported weapons had been used in crimes ranging from a 2022 massacre at a preschool in Thailand to the assassination last August of the leading presidential candidate in Ecuador.
In late October, the Biden administration announced a 90-day freeze of many U.S. firearms exports so it could consider revising the regulations. The new measure is set to become public six months into the freeze.
Gun rights advocates have called the policy review an “assault on American firearms industry” that would cost U.S. manufacturers and exporters hundreds of millions in lost sales a year. Their supporters in Congress have pressed the administration to end the freeze, vowing to overturn any new restrictions on such exports.
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