Leftists were already apoplectic that Donald Trump managed to install firebrand Kash Patel as FBI director. Now, upping the ante, Trump is about to turn the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) over to Patel too, according to sources cited by multiple news outlets on Saturday evening. The extraordinary move has some wondering if Trump might move to dissolve the ATF altogether.
Gun Owners of America has lauded Patel as being "fiercely pro-gun." However, during his confirmation hearings, Patel skirted direct questioning about whether civilians should be allowed to own machine guns, or whether background checks are constitutional, saying, "Whatever the courts rule in regards to the Second Amendment is what is protected by the Second Amendment."
The ATF is already the focus of a Trump II overhaul. Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired the ATF's top lawyer, Pamela Hicks. "These people were targeting gun owners. Not gonna happen under this administration,” Bondi told Fox News. The FBI and ATF both reside within the Department of Justice.
Patel may be sworn in as acting director of the ATF this week, a Justice official told AP. The agency has roughly 5,500 employees -- today, at least. With Trump's Department of Government Efficiency looking to slash the federal employment rolls, the ATF should be a prime target for headcount reduction.
Better yet, many are hoping -- and others fearing -- that putting the ATF in Patel's portfolio could signal that the ultimate objective is to dismantle it. That would be a bold move for a president who comes into his second term with a decidedly spotty record where the right to armed self-defense is concerned.
- Trump embraced "red flag" laws that empower police to seize firearms from people they deem dangerous, without due process. In 2018, Trump infamously told reporters, "Take the firearms first, and then go to court...I like taking the guns early...Take the guns first, go through due process second."
- Exceeding its authority, his first-term ATF imaginatively reinterpreted the definition of an automatic weapon to include bump stocks, banned their sale, and demanded that civilians turn them in the ones they already owned.
- Trump promised to push for increasing the legal age for purchasing firearms to 18.
That said, Trump's second term is off to a strong start on the gun rights front. On Feb 7, Trump signed an executive order that sought to curtail federal infringements on rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Among other things, the multifaceted order directed Bondi to:
- Catalogue and address all actions of the Biden administration that infringed on gun rights
- Reverse the heavy-handed "zero tolerance" or "enhanced regulatory enforcement policy” by which enforcement actions against Federal Firearms Licensees (FFL's) -- many of them small businesses --skyrocketed nearly six-fold.
- Review how firearms and ammunition are categorized and thus regulated
Rightly resented by liberty-minded Americans, the ATF has played central roles in some of the most ghastly crimes committed by the federal government in recent decades, from the ATF entrapment of Randy Weaver that led to the killing of his 14-year-old son and his wife as she held their 10-month-old daughter, to the standoff in Waco that ended in the mass slaughter of 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children.
Like the vast majority of the federal government, there's no constitutional authority for the ATF to exist in the first place. As the old joke goes, "Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency." Here's hoping that wry aspiration become reality.