{"id":119508,"date":"2026-11-03T09:49:57","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T15:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=119508"},"modified":"2026-11-03T09:52:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T15:52:20","slug":"119508","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=119508","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

BLUF:
\nThe record does show a career ATF lawyer who sat at the center of the agency\u2019s biggest fights over the last few years. He did it almost entirely out of sight. If he really is now one of the agency\u2019s senior lawyers, gun owners should start paying attention to the name.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ATF Lawyer You\u2019ve Never Heard Of: William J. Ryan\u2019s Paper Trail on Braces, Forced Reset Triggers and Gun Trusts<\/a><\/p>\n

Most gun owners couldn\u2019t pick William J. Ryan out of a lineup. Nearly everything he has said about guns in public is buried in court filings. But if you owned a pistol brace in 2023, built an NFA collection through a trust, or bought a forced reset trigger, Ryan\u2019s work touched you. Now he\u2019s replacing Robert Leider as Acting Chief Counsel for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).<\/p>\n

From Marine Lawyer to ATF\u2019s Classification Chief<\/h2>\n

Ryan joined the ATF in April 2009 as a firearms and explosives attorney in Martinsburg, West Virginia, according to his own court declarations and a conference speaker bio. Before that, he was a Marine Corps judge advocate at Camp Pendleton. By early 2023, he was Acting Chief of the Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division (FATD). By that summer, he was signing filings as Chief.<\/p>\n

Today his LinkedIn <\/a>profile describes him as \u201cDeputy Chief Counsel for a Federal Agency\u201d who supervises 100 attorneys. The profile doesn\u2019t name the agency. ATF is the obvious bet given his whole career, but I couldn\u2019t confirm the agency or when he took the job, so treat that title as his own description, not an official one.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Gun Trusts and 41P<\/h2>\n

Gun owners first saw Ryan in 2015. At the NRA Firearms Law Seminar in Nashville on April 10, 2015, he spoke as an NFA Branch attorney about gun trusts.<\/p>\n

The account comes from Pennsylvania gun-rights attorney Joshua Prince, who sues the ATF and titled his blog post \u201cShocking statements \/ Concessions by ATF.\u201d Keep that in mind. According to Prince, Ryan blamed much of the NFA backlog on trusts drafted by non-attorneys and fill-in-the-blank forms. Ryan said trust applications went from 45 in 2003 to 36,000 in 2012.<\/p>\n

Prince wrote<\/a> that Ryan said the ATF was \u201cstill sorting through the comments\u201d on ATF-41P, the rule that changed how trusts and responsible persons were handled for NFA transfers. On a prohibited executor, Prince reported Ryan said the person \u201ccan\u2019t possess it\u201d and \u201cit is on that person to know that.\u201d Ryan also acknowledged that a trust counts as a \u201cperson\u201d under the NFA but not under the Gun Control Act.<\/p>\n

Sutherland Springs<\/h2>\n

Ryan\u2019s most consequential testimony didn\u2019t come in a gun-rights case. It came in Holcombe v. United States<\/em><\/a>, the lawsuit over the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting.<\/p>\n

On April 13, 2021, the government called Ryan to testify before Judge Xavier Rodriguez in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Ryan told the court he had been appointed ATF\u2019s liaison to the Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General (IG) on the Devin Kelley case.<\/p>\n

He also signed the ATF memo, using signature authority for the Associate Chief Counsel, that found Kelley was a prohibited person. The memo concluded Kelley was barred under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1<\/a>) because of a felony-level court-martial conviction and under 922(g)(9)<\/a> for a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. It found he was not prohibited under (g)(4)<\/a> or (g)(6)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The court later found the Air Force liable for failing to report Kelley to NICS.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the irony. Ryan was a government witness, but his testimony laid out the exact point the families needed: Kelley was prohibited and should have been in the system. The background check system didn\u2019t fail because the law was weak. It failed because the government didn\u2019t send in the records.<\/p>\n

The Pistol Brace Rule<\/h2>\n

In 2023, Ryan put his name behind one of the most hated ATF rules in recent memory. On March 10, 2023, as Acting Chief of FATD, he filed a declaration in Britto v. ATF<\/em><\/a> in the Northern District of Texas. He walked through the January 31, 2023 \u201cstabilizing brace\u201d rule, including its claim that most braced firearms are likely short-barreled rifles and its 120-day registration window.<\/p>\n

He also addressed the pictures the ATF posted of common platforms and commercial models it considered SBRs. Ryan said those examples were informational, not final classifications, and that owners could request a classification letter for their own setup.<\/p>\n

Four days earlier, on March 6, 2023, Ryan\u2019s declaration was filed with the ATF\u2019s opposition to a preliminary injunction in Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition (FRAC) v. Garland<\/a><\/em> in North Dakota.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t end well for the ATF. On August 9, 2024, the Eighth Circuit held that the ATF\u2019s brace test was likely arbitrary and capricious and reversed the denial of a preliminary injunction. The Fifth Circuit ruled against the agency too, and the rule was eventually abandoned.<\/p>\n

The government posted a picture of your gun, called it a likely NFA item, and then its own classification chief told a court the picture wasn\u2019t final. That\u2019s the brace rule in one sentence.<\/p>\n

Rare Breed Triggers<\/h2>\n

Ryan showed up again in the government\u2019s case against Rare Breed Triggers over the FRT-15 in the Eastern District of New York. As Chief of FATD, he filed a declaration<\/a> explaining how his division works. He said it had about 28 Firearms Enforcement Officers across five branches. He said those classifications determine whether an item falls under the GCA or NFA.<\/p>\n

Rare Breed moved to exclude him. The company argued he was an undisclosed expert with no personal knowledge of the case. The Department of Justice called him a pure fact witness.<\/p>\n

The court sided with DOJ. According to the government\u2019s witness list, the motion to exclude Ryan was denied by minute entry on July 30, 2023. In May 2025, DOJ announced a settlement<\/a> with Rare Breed.<\/p>\n

The Award<\/h2>\n

Ryan also picked up an Attorney General\u2019s Distinguished Service Award<\/a> under Merrick Garland. DOJ listed him as \u201cATF Firearms & Ammunition Chief William J. Ryan,\u201d alongside ATF\u2019s regulatory affairs chief, rule writers, and the agency\u2019s top lawyers. The release doesn\u2019t say which rule earned the award.<\/p>\n

What I Didn\u2019t Find<\/h2>\n

AmmoLand News found no congressional testimony from Ryan and no Inspector General or GAO findings against him. A federal campaign finance search turned up no donations, though that search was limited and he may list a different employer or state. An X search found no posts naming him. I didn\u2019t find any news coverage of him, including at AmmoLand.<\/p>\n

The record does show a career ATF lawyer who sat at the center of the agency\u2019s biggest fights over the last few years. He did it almost entirely out of sight. If he really is now one of the agency\u2019s senior lawyers, gun owners should start paying attention to the name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLUF: The record does show a career ATF lawyer who sat at the center of the agency\u2019s biggest fights over the last few years. He did it almost entirely out of sight. If he really is now one of the agency\u2019s senior lawyers, gun owners should start paying attention to the name. The ATF Lawyer … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucraps","category-crap-for-brains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119508"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119512,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119508\/revisions\/119512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}