When President Obama nominated Andrew Traver, who is currently the Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Chicago Field Division, to be the new Director of the ATF, a firestorm was touched off among gun-rights activists, who described Traver as an "anti-gun zealot." On the other hand, gun-controllers like the Brady Campaign were enthused when Traver was nominated by President Obama to be the head of the ATF. Those looking to preserve Americans' God-given right to armed self-defense have much to be concerned about. Dave Kopel of the Colorado-based Independence Institute told the Christian Science Monitor, "This is a demonstration that Obama has ... the same attitudes about Second Amendment rights now as he did [when he was an Illinois state Senator], which is quite hostile.... He's picked a strong anti-Second Amendment person for an administrative job that has far more influence over the practical exercise of Second Amendment rights than any other job in the country."

Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin wrote that "Traver allied with the progressive Joyce Foundation to lobby for tighter federal restrictions of Second Amendment freedoms. He ... opposes privacy protections for gun owners. He has also compared automatic black-market weapons to legal semiautomatic assault weapons." Such criticisms have stalled Traver's nomination and, at the time of this writing, it hasn't yet come up to a vote by the U.S. Senate.