This could be seriously big

Just in the last hour someone leaked an ATF White Paper regarding changes to be potentially made in the ATF.
If this is real, it's got several big changes suggested.  One of the biggest being on suppressors:
...While DOJ and ATF have historically not supported removal of items from the NFA, the change in public acceptance of silencers arguably indicates that the reason for their inclusion in the NFA is archaic and historical reluctance to removing them from the NFA should be reevaluated. ATF’s experience with the criminal use of silencers also supports reassessing their inclusion in the NFA. On average in the past 10 years, ATF has only recommended 44 defendants a year for prosecution on silencer-related violations; of those, only approximately 6 of the defendants had prior felony convictions. Moreover, consistent with this low number of prosecution referrals, silencers are very rarely used in criminal shootings. Given the lack of criminality associated with silencers, it is reasonable to conclude that they should not be viewed as a threat to public safety necessitating NFA classification, and should be considered for reclassification under the GCA.

While it could be that some of the people at ATF who aren't political asshats are finally trying to get some intelligent fixes done, it could also be said asshats trying to stay in control.  If the Hearing Protection Act goes through it would not give ATF any leeway in deciding on suppressors, for instance; it could be someone thinking "If we can change things enough to make people think the HPA isn't needed, we'd be able to change things around later."

Likewise, with a bill being pushed to make the ATF go away, this might be a "See, we can be reasonable!  Don't make our agency go away!"*

We'll see how this goes.


*Why yes, I am very suspicious about such anymore.