Warren, Castro, push Biden to scrutinize gun exports to foreign governments

Two Democratic lawmakers are pushing the Biden administration to strengthen oversight of gun exports to foreign governments, raising alarm about American-made firearms used in El Salvador gang violence, a mass shooting in a nursery school in Thailand, and in Israel against Palestinian civilians. 

In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo shared exclusively with The Hill, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) call for stricter oversight and restrictions on the export of assault weapons and small firearms.

The letter was sent July 1, the final day to submit comments for a proposed rule announced by the Commerce Department in April that restricts all small arms exports to nongovernment entities in high risk countries.

“It would be a mistake for the Department of Commerce to finalize a rule that allows U.S. military-style weapons to keep fueling violent, needless killings around the world,” Warren said in a statement to The Hill.

“Strengthening safeguards for assault weapon exports is a national security priority.”

Warren and Castro are critical of the Biden administration maintaining former President Trump’s transfer of authority from the State Department to Commerce Department for the commercial export of firearms.

While they welcome the introduction of the proposed rule in April, the Democrats are calling on the Commerce Department to tighten the rules surrounding the export of firearms to foreign governments and commit to publishing data publicly on such sales. 

“While we continue to support returning all firearms export controls to the State Department, we urge the Commerce Department to incorporate the recommendations in this letter as part of its policy review in the interim, in order to strengthen export controls and end-use checks and to crack down on unnecessary export promotion of weapons used in brutal killings abroad,” they wrote.

In particular, they raise concern about the Israeli government supplying citizens — including many who are settlers in the West Bank — with firearms amid an increase in violent confrontations with Palestinians, in particular since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

In December, the Biden administration reportedly paused a sale of 20,000 U.S.-made rifles to Israel over concerns about attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank.

A State Department spokesperson told The Hill on Tuesday that the agency is “restricted from publicly confirming or commenting on details regarding pre-decisional direct commercial defense sales licensing activities.”

“All U.S. weapons transfers are subject to rules governing their use, including as the Secretary said, ‘the imperative of respect for humanitarian law,’” the statement continued. 

But the lawmakers are calling for the Commerce Department to take additional steps beyond the April rule to implement “adequate oversight of the transfer of weapons to governmental end users.”

“Without safeguarding against and thoroughly vetting the threats of human rights abuses by governmental end users, the rule functionally allows for a ‘free flow of weapons to military and police forces in many countries,’” they said, citing text from an advocacy group seeking to crack down on how U.S. weapons are used in human rights abuses by security forces, or the illegal trafficking of U.S.-purchased guns in Mexico. 

They also raise concern that the April rule does not comprehensively restrict the sale of firearms to nongovernment actors abroad, nor does it ban the commercial resale of assault weapons outside the U.S. 

Additionally, Warren and Castro call for the Commerce Department to commit to releasing firearms export data.

“The public deserves to know whether their government is rubber stamping approvals of assault weapons licenses and transfers that end up in the hands of malicious actors that threaten U.S. national security and foreign policy interests,” the lawmakers wrote. 

“Transparency regarding export approvals data and how American firearms are used once abroad is one of the key ways Commerce can be held accountable.”

Investigations by media and think tanks on the impact of U.S. sales of firearms abroad rely on a range of different data sources to try to piece together the scale of such exports. 

The Center for American Progress (CAP), citing trade data from the U.S. Census Bureau, said U.S. exports of firearms increased “15 percent by volume and 33 percent in value” between 2020 and 2023, illustrating the impact of weapons exports when placed under the authority of the Commerce Department.  

“By comparison, exports decreased when comparing both value and volume from the four years before 2016 to the years after,” the CAP report notes.

The lawmakers in their letter point to violent incidents outside the U.S. where American-made weapons were involved, underscoring the seriousness of implementing reforms. They point to an October 2022 shooting at a nursery school in Thailand by a police officer who killed 36 people with a sugarcane machete and an American-made Sig Sauer pistol. 

And they raise the example of concerns over human rights violations by security forces in El Salvador and incidents of firearms used in homicides, particularly in 2022, as coinciding with a rise in the export of U.S.-sold semiautomatic firearms. 

“We are concerned that the changes fail to include key reporting requirements and do not go far enough to prevent assault weapons from ending up in the hands of dangerous actors around the world,” the lawmakers wrote.

“National security must come before commerce.”

The Commerce Department told The Hill it had received the letter and will reply through the appropriate channels.