Howard Gatch of Hegshot87 came back from vacation to find what he calls “great news” for gun owners.
In his report, Gatch says President Trump refused to allow the government shutdown to morph into a “Second Amendment shutdown.”
According to Gatch, two specific decisions made the difference. First, hunts on National Wildlife Refuges were allowed to continue. Second, the ATF recalled furloughed NFA staff as “essential,” keeping Form 1 and Form 4 processing alive.
That combination, in Gatch’s telling, prevented the kind of cascading delays that have hurt hunters, shops, and regular gun owners in past shutdowns.
I think he’s right to highlight the practical side of this. Shutdowns usually punish the people far from the decision-making table. This time, the damage was blunted where it often hits hardest.
Shutdown Surprise: Hunts Keep Going
Gatch says hunts scheduled on National Wildlife Refuges stayed on the calendar. He notes there are roughly 436 refuge sites still open, even after staffing shrank from about 7,000 to a little over 4,600.
To a non-hunter, he admits, this might sound small. But as Gatch frames it, hunting feeds families, funds local jobs, and helps control populations, especially deer, reducing collisions and other impacts that spike when seasons are disrupted.
Gatch contrasts this with the Obama-era approach, where shutdowns closed parks and chained gates.
Those closures, he says, crushed outfitters who lost tens of thousands in revenue and left legitimate, pre-permitted hunts in limbo.
I like that Gatch connects dots most people miss. A hunt is not just a weekend; it’s a season’s worth of saving, scouting, travel, and booked services. When the gate is locked, the ripple hits taxidermists, processors, guides, and small towns that live on the fall rush.
Why the ATF Call-Back Matters
The second decision was the bigger shock to Gatch.
He says ATF furloughed employees at the start of the shutdown, “October 1 to October 2,” in his words, and NFA paperwork stopped.
Forms for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and other NFA items froze. Gatch recalls how a 35-day shutdown in 2018–2019 created a standstill, and he points to what could have happened again if nothing changed.
According to Gatch, the Gun Owners of America (GOA) indicated that on October 17 those ATF staffers were called back and reclassified as essential.
That brought Form 1s and Form 4s back online, and with them, the pipeline gun owners depend on to actually exercise the rights they’ve already paid and applied for.
Gatch emphasizes why timing matters right now. In the last year and a half, he says, NFA wait times hit some of their best levels – sometimes approvals came back in about a week. With a January 1 NFA tax change on deck, he expects demand to jump and wait times to stretch.
I appreciate his point about bureaucracy and rights. When the government is the gatekeeper, time is power. “Delays equal denials,” as Gatch puts it, isn’t just a slogan – it’s the lived reality of a paper-dependent right.
Avoiding a Backlog Disaster
Gatch brings receipts on volume. He says there were about 1 million NFA applications in 2013, compared to 3.5 million in 2023. Now picture a 30–45 day shutdown, he says, with nobody touching that stack.
What happens? Backlogs explode, approvals stall, shops suffer, and people give up or delay purchases. Not just a customer problem – an ecosystem problem.
In Gatch’s telling, the Trump directive to keep ATF forms processing was informed by that reality.
Whether the insight was the president’s or his team’s, he credits the decision as the right one for keeping the flow moving.
From a policy perspective, I think this shows a simple truth: if a right depends on a process, the process is the right for most people. Keeping the pipes open isn’t a favor to gun owners—it’s the minimum standard for not turning a constitutional right into a paperwork lottery.
Hunters, Shops, and the Real-World Ripple
Gatch keeps returning to the human layer.
He lists taxidermists and processors who build their year around this season. He mentions outfitters and small businesses that can’t just “make it up later.”
On the NFA side, he warns that if forms stop, store counters go quiet. Some customers will wait; many will walk. For small shops riding thin margins, a bad month isn’t an inconvenience – it’s a cliff.
He also points out that while shutdown politics rage, most government employees eventually receive back pay.
That helps them recover. It doesn’t revive a lost season, a missed week of bookings, or a purchase a customer decided not to make.
My read: this is why “keep it open” matters. It’s not ideology. It’s continuity. When government interruptions decide who gets to hunt and who gets to sell, we’re not debating abstractions – we’re picking winners and losers with a lock and a key.
The Ping-Pong With Trump – And Why This One Lands
Gatch is candid about his approach to Trump. He praises what helps gun owners. He criticizes what hurts. He calls it “ping-pong,” but says it’s “mostly good” – and puts this decision in the really good column.
He reminds viewers that nobody gets it right 100% of the time.
The point isn’t team loyalty; it’s outcomes. On this, he says, the Trump team went “above and beyond” expectations by shielding both hunters and NFA applicants from the shutdown’s worst effects.
I agree with that balance. You can cheer the good and still hold the line on the rest.
In a space where policy often swings with headlines, making sure the core mechanisms of a right continue to function is a substantive win.
The Numbers Behind the Stakes
Gatch’s numbers tell the story.
436 refuges open. A workforce cut from ~7,000 to ~4,600. A prior 35-day shutdown that froze forms. NFA applications tripling from ~1 million (2013) to ~3.5 million (2023).
He adds a practical forecast: with the January 1 tax change, demand likely spikes.
If the shutdown had iced forms for a month or more, the system could’ve stayed jammed well into the new year.
That’s why this call mattered, in his view. It wasn’t symbolic. It was the difference between a manageable queue and a months-long snarl that punishes everyone in the chain.
Gatch closes with a broad takeaway. Shutdowns have a trickle-down effect that often lands on everyday Americans – and on their rights.
He’s “glad to see” that amid nearly a million furloughed jobs, two operations that protect exercise, the hunts and the forms, were kept alive.
It’s not everything, he admits. But it’s meaningful.
My take: the deeper lesson is structural. If a constitutional right relies on a government office, a shutdown shouldn’t be able to shut the right. Building resilience into those processes – firewalls, automatic continuity, rapid recalls – should be the norm, not the exception.
The Bottom Line
Howard Gatch’s report is simple and specific. Keep refuge hunts running. Keep ATF NFA processing staffed. Prevent the shutdown from becoming a backdoor gun-rights disruption.
He credits President Trump for doing both.
He warns what would have happened if neither occurred. And he calls out the practical winners – hunters, shops, and regular gun owners who didn’t find their plans or paperwork dead on arrival.
I’ll add one more note. Stability builds trust.
When the government shows it can protect both safety and rights during a crisis, people stop bracing for the worst every time the word “shutdown” hits the news.
This time, as Gatch reports it, the system bent but didn’t break. For the Second Amendment community, that’s not just good news – it’s a proof of concept worth repeating.
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Image Credit: Survival World
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A former park ranger and wildlife conservationist, Lisa’s passion for survival started with her deep connection to nature. Raised on a small farm in northern Wisconsin, she learned how to grow her own food, raise livestock, and live off the land. Lisa is our dedicated Second Amendment news writer and also focuses on homesteading, natural remedies, and survival strategies. Lisa aims to help others live more sustainably and prepare for the unexpected.
