About the Guy Reportedly Taking Over From Robert Leider at ATF – Bearing Arms

Robert Leider was probably the very best option we could have had as chief counsel at the ATF. We expect him to be a voice of reason there, and everything we’ve seen come out of the ATF that went through his office has a fingerprint of someone who supports and defends the Second Amendment as part of the Constitution, not an inconvenient roadblock.

To say we’ll miss him is an understatement.

However, someone has to do his job, and from what I’m hearing, I have concerns about just who that is.

Most gun owners couldn’t 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’s work touched you. Now he’s replacing Robert Leider as Acting Chief Counsel for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

From Marine Lawyer to ATF’s Classification Chief

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.

Today his LinkedIn profile describes him as “Deputy Chief Counsel for a Federal Agency” who supervises 100 attorneys. The profile doesn’t name the agency. ATF is the obvious bet given his whole career, but I couldn’t confirm the agency or when he took the job, so treat that title as his own description, not an official one.

Now, so far, what’s so bad about the guy?

Well, he irked some people with comments about NFA trusts, he was the one who laid out in court that the Sutherland Springs killer was actually a prohibited person and that the Air Force screwed up when they didn’t put him into the NICS database.

But this is the thing that will really fire people up.

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 in the Northern District of Texas. He walked through the January 31, 2023 “stabilizing brace” rule, including its claim that most braced firearms are likely short-barreled rifles and its 120-day registration window.

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.

Four days earlier, on March 6, 2023, Ryan’s declaration was filed with the ATF’s opposition to a preliminary injunction in Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition (FRAC) v. Garland in North Dakota.

It didn’t end well for the ATF. On August 9, 2024, the Eighth Circuit held that the ATF’s 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.

Now, the question really boils down to whether Ryan was simply following directives of those above him or whether he’s a true believer in gun control. Yes, it matters. While “I’m just following orders” doesn’t actually win you a lot of love when you’re infringing on people’s rights, there’s a difference between holding onto your gig so you can feed your family and actually wanting to do a particular thing. Some will excuse the former, but no one should excuse the latter.

Ryan was also involved in the government’s lawsuit against Rare Breed Triggers and its force-reset trigger, which is one of the niftier pieces of hardware available today. Again, was it because he wanted to be there, or because he was directed to be there?

Luckily, this is an interim thing. My hope is ATF Director Robert Cekada finds someone of a similar mind to Leider for the role. Ryan might not be as anti-gun as he seems at first blush, based on this information, but I’m also not sure that I want to trust him in a role quite like that of chief counsel.

I’m willing to overlook a lot, but he went to work for the ATF in a role he had to know would place him in charge of creating gun control policies. It’s possible he just needed the job for some reason, but I’m skeptical of that since he’s a freaking lawyer. That means he likely wanted to write those kinds of rules, and that’s the last kind of person I want anywhere near the seat that gets that authority.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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