Donald Trump Jr. Reportedly Profits From Gun Retail Business As Trump Weakens Regulations Limiting Firearm Transactions

Donald Trump Jr. holds a financial stake in America's only publicly traded gun retailer at the same time his father's administration has been systematically dismantling the federal rules that once constrained how those guns are sold.

Trump Jr. sits on the board of GrabAGun Digital Holdings, an online firearms marketplace that began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PEW on 16 July 2025, after completing a merger with Colombier Acquisition Corp. II, a special purpose acquisition company led by Republican megadonor Omeed Malik.

He holds approximately 1% of the company's equity, a stake that was worth around £3.1 million ($4 million) at the time of the listing, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, his father signed an executive order in February 2025 directing the Justice Department to review and roll back federal gun regulations, a process that has since produced a series of specific, concrete changes benefiting online firearms retailers.

GrabAGun's Business Model and Trump Jr.'s Role

GrabAGun, headquartered in Coppell, Texas, reported £72.1 million ($93.1 million) in revenue in 2024, according to its SEC registration statement. The company sells firearms, ammunition, suppressors, short-barrelled rifles and shotguns, and high-capacity magazines through its website. It also offers an 'AR-15 Builder' tool for configuring custom assault-style rifles, a monthly ammunition subscription service, and a 'Shoot Now, Pay Later' financing product offered through fintech partner Credova, which provided roughly 8% of GrabAGun's revenue in 2024.

Trump Jr. began consulting for GrabAGun shortly after the November 2024 election and was formally named a prospective board member in a regulatory filing on 24 March 2025. He signed his director consent on 21 March 2025. The GrabAGun S-4 filing with the SEC explicitly warned that the company's business 'may be harmed, in particular, if Donald J. Trump Jr. ceases to be involved with GrabAGun or to support our business and publicise our product offerings,' according to reporting by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW noted that the filing acknowledged the company could trade above where its fundamentals suggested, partly as a result of a 'cult of personality.' GrabAGun's stock fell more than 20% on its debut day and subsequently declined further, though Trump Jr.'s stake remained valued at over £1.6 million ($2 million) by late July 2025.

Trump Jr. is a partner at Malik's investment firm 1789 Capital, which also backed Truth Social, PublicSquare, and the Tucker Carlson Network. GrabAGun's board includes Chris Cox, the former chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association (NRA), and Colion Noir, a firearms influencer who also worked for the NRA.

Trump Jr. rang the NYSE opening bell on 16 July 2025, chanting 'USA!' with the crowd gathered on the trading floor, and described GrabAGun to Fox Business as a 'catalyst for change' and a repudiation of what he called 'woke' financial policies that had previously limited the firearms industry's access to capital.

The Federal Rollbacks and What They Mean for Online Gun Sales

On 7 February 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to review all Justice Department and ATF rules pertaining to firearms issued between January 2021 and January 2025, and to identify those she believed infringed on Second Amendment rights.

Within 60 days, the administration delivered its most consequential change to date: on 7 April 2025, the ATF formally terminated its Zero Tolerance Policy, which had instructed the agency to revoke the federal firearms licences of gun dealers found to have willfully committed serious violations including selling weapons without conducting background checks, falsifying records, and failing to respond to FBI gun-tracing requests.

The Zero Tolerance Policy, first enacted in June 2021, had produced the highest rate of gun dealer licence revocations in the ATF's history. Gun violence prevention group Brady called the repeal 'particularly devastating,' with its president Kris Brown saying in a statement cited by The Trace that the policy 'specifically targeted the small percentage of dealers with egregious violations, who were often responsible for flooding our streets with illegal firearms.'

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry's main trade body, took credit for the reversal, saying it had worked with the Trump administration to secure the rollback 'since the first day of the president's second term.'

The administration went further in May 2025, when the ATF announced what it called a 'New Era of Reform.' That package included shortening the validity window for background checks on gun purchases from 30 to 60 days, allowing gun dealers to destroy records after 20 years rather than keeping them indefinitely, simplifying ATF Form 4473 (the form used to record background check results at the point of sale), and streamlining the transport process for National Firearms Act items such as suppressors and short-barrelled rifles. These are product categories GrabAGun actively sells.

The Department of Justice also proposed a 25% cut to the ATF's budget in fiscal year 2026, a reduction that would eliminate more than 500 investigators who conduct inspections of licensed gun dealers. The agency's own analysis, cited by NPR, found the proposed cut would reduce the ATF's capacity to regulate the firearms and explosives industries by around 40%.

Conflict-of-Interest Questions and Congressional Scrutiny

The overlap between Trump Jr.'s financial interests and his father's deregulatory agenda has drawn attention from ethics watchdogs. CREW reported that Paul Atkins, the Trump-appointed chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, reportedly attended the launch party for Trump Jr. and Malik's Washington D.C. private club, Executive Branch, on 26 April 2025, five days after Atkins was sworn into office.

The SEC granted a notice of effectiveness for GrabAGun's S-4, a prerequisite for its public listing, on 20 June 2025. CREW noted the sequence of events and said it was part of a growing pattern of entanglements between the Trump family's commercial ventures and federal regulatory decisions. Neither the SEC nor Atkins commented on the matter.

GrabAGun itself has been explicit about how the regulatory environment affects its bottom line. The Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, in a video produced with The Smoking Gun, described the suite of Trump-era rollbacks as changes GrabAGun is 'perfectly situated to make money off of.' That assessment aligns with GrabAGun's own investor materials.

According to a slide deck filed with the SEC and reviewed by The Smoking Gun, the company's pitch characterised Second Amendment rights as 'under attack' and described the gun industry as having been 'stymied by woke capital constraints' during the Biden years. The company announced plans to integrate artificial intelligence into its sales platform and stated an explicit strategy of targeting 18 to 35-year-old buyers.

GrabAGun's third-quarter 2025 results, published in November, showed revenue of £17.3 million ($22.3 million) for the quarter, a year-over-year increase of 10%, with firearms sales specifically up 12%. CEO Marc Nemati said in a statement reported by The Reload that GrabAGun 'significantly outperformed' the broader market, with its firearms sales volume rising 16% year-over-year at a time when adjusted FBI background check data showed industry-wide sales falling 5.3%. The company attributed part of its growth to its e-commerce model, which it said reduces friction for buyers who find traditional gun shops harder to navigate.

As the administration strips away the enforcement mechanisms that once constrained gun dealers, the son of the president stands to profit from a company built on the proposition that buying a firearm online should be as easy as ordering anything else.