By David Codrea
“Common sense budgeting solutions are necessary, and the ATF Elimination Act is one measure we can take to reduce spending, redundancy, and practice responsible governance,” Sensenbrenner claims. “The ATF is a scandal-ridden, largely duplicative agency that has been branded by failure and lacks a clear mission. It is plagued by backlogs, funding gaps, hiring challenges, and a lack of leadership. These facts make it a logical place to begin draining the swamp and acting in the best interest of the American taxpayer.”
As noted, Sensenbrenner has tried this before, albeit the political possibilities with a Trump presidency and Republican House and Senate majorities may actually give the bill a chance of being passed this time around. On the surface, it sounds like a great way to begin the draining. But the devil is in the details, and in this case, the devil we know may actually be less institutionally insulated.
Note the bill won’t eliminate functions being performed; it will merely transfer them to bureaucrats and agents in a better position to fend off scrutiny. And while more fiscal responsibility is a worthy goal, in the case of enforcing federal gun edicts, that Republican majority established largely through gun owner support ought to be focusing on the constitutionality of infringements.
“ATF has been a horror movie since its inception,” Gun Owners of America’s Larry Pratt told Human Events about an earlier attempt to divvy up the Bureau’s functions. “It needs to be disbanded, not moved to a hiding place behind the FBI skirts – which do not cover very well, anyway.”
Per Congress.gov, the bill, H.R.509, has been “referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.” At this point, per the GovTrack.us legislative monitoring site, the text is not yet available, there are no co-sponsors and a prognosis for likelihood of passage has not yet been estimated.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
BATF has NO Lawful authority to exist. It was Never created by Congress, thats a problem. By bureaucratic stroke of a pen BATF went through several name and function changes. A ” Color of Law ” construct , it must be abolished.
The Federal Register actually calls … ” Director of ATF shall ALSO mean agency IRS. “. A person is now a THING ?
Fraud , plain and simple.
AFT in my comment should be ATF. Pardon my poor typing.
Eliminating the AFT, aka BATFE, which is involved in activities in no way connected with firearms, might help, however simply eliminating a particular agency, as has been noted, misses the point, and it misses it badly, for there remains the.llowing questions. 1. What happens with the detritus elimination of the agency would leave, in particular all the lovely regulations and interpretations, aka dictates that have come forth from this run away mob. 2. What happens with the legislative monstrosities created by our elected representatives, that have allowed the ATF to in effect, run wild, the Gun Control Act of 1968… Read more »
If it doesn’t interfere with the important pissing-up-the-wall dialogue, I would like to mention that … I think it might be a good idea to eliminate the ATF and shift its duties to other federal agencies. The ATF (BATFE … etc) … is an organization in search of a job. They don’t have enough to do while enforcing regulations on alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives. So they are desperate for a way to justify their existence. They couldn’t find enough work regulating firearms, and their best years of busting moon-shiners were gone, and tobacco isn’t an issue (enough smokers die… Read more »
There is a crying need to repeal a whole lot of junk legislation, no small amount of which involved firearms and firearms enforcement law and let’s not forget “regulations” aka bureaucratic decrees, some of which the congressman played a role in the creation of. The game sometimes known as Hide The Salami, which moving things from here to there amounts to simply will not suffice. Additionally, correct me if I’m wrong, neither this proposal nor any other proposal in any way at all, address the problem of bureaucratic criminality that ATF management has long been up to it’s eyebrows in.… Read more »
This bill makes a lot of sense and should be passed.