Biden Wants to Tighten Arms Export Rules to Combat Criminal Diversion

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(Bloomberg) — To curb the use of U.S.-made civilian weapons in crimes and human rights abuses abroad, the Biden administration will require exporters to better vet their customers and limit sales to 36 countries deemed “high risk.” The illegal diversion of semi-automatic weapons includes firearms, according to people briefed on the plan.

The new rules – the most sweeping in decades – also shorten the term of export licenses from four years to one and give the State Department more power to block sales. The Commerce Department is expected to release on Friday the 150-page regulation that agency officials have presented to stakeholders and policymakers on Capitol Hill.

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The plan resulted from the department’s review of its support of the U.S. gun industry – a process that began after a Bloomberg News investigation last year linked record civilian gun exports to higher gun crime rates in countries including Guatemala, Brazil and Canada . A Commerce Department spokesman declined to comment on the new rules when contacted Thursday.

Over the past decade, both Republican and Democratic administrations in some of the world’s most violence-prone countries have promoted U.S.-made weapons as retail products. The investigation documented how legally exported weapons were used in crimes ranging from a massacre at a preschool in Thailand in 2022 to the assassination of the leading presidential candidate in Ecuador last August.

In late October, the Biden administration announced a 90-day freeze on many U.S. firearms exports to consider overhauling regulations. The new measure is due to be published six months after the freeze.

Gun rights advocates are calling the policy review an “attack on the American firearms industry” that would cost U.S. manufacturers and exporters hundreds of millions annually in lost sales. Its supporters in Congress have urged the administration to lift the freeze and vowed to lift any new restrictions on such exports.

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“The rule will simply close small businesses across America by cutting them off from the export market, resulting in the loss of good-paying jobs,” Larry Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said in an email Thursday evening. The new regulations “would do nothing to improve national security,” he added.

The measure falls short of President Biden’s campaign promise to return oversight of arms exports to the State Department, which regulated foreign arms sales until March 2020. It will now lead a multi-agency review process that will review all export applications that raise potential human rights concerns.

These reviews include all applications to export U.S. weapons to countries where the State Department has identified a risk of human rights violations and arms trafficking. The new rules require Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s department to consider applications for commercial export licenses to those countries with the presumption of denial, rather than the current presumption of approval.

The list of high-risk countries includes many where the influx of U.S.-made weapons has been linked to widespread violence, including Vietnam, Jamaica, Indonesia and Pakistan, as well as countries in the Organization of American States, which includes large parts of Central and United States South Asia belongs to America.

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But missing from the high-risk list are several places where U.S. weapons are linked to violent gangs or human rights abuses, such as Mexico, Thailand, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia.

For arms exporters, the new regulations not only reduce the potential market, they also require greater scrutiny of customers and higher costs. Exporters must renew their export licenses every year and must submit more detailed purchase orders in many countries. They must also collect copies of passports or ID cards from gun dealers and other customers abroad.

The new rules also aim to make it easier for federal regulators to control the export of the most dangerous weapons by creating different trade categories for semi-automatic firearms and the components used to make them. These products were classified into a collection group that included everything from hunting rifles to antique collectibles.

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