The Trace Bemoans More Departures at ATF

The recent departures of Kash Patel as Acting ATF Director and Deputy Director Marvin Richardson aren’t the only changes that have been taking place at the agency. According to the pro-gun control website The Trace, a number of other senior officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives have also either announced their plans to retire or have already walked out the door. 

Four assistant directors and the agency’s chief technology officer have left or announced plans to leave the agency in the past six months, according to the officials and a review of LinkedIn posts. At least two of these officials accepted deferred resignations offered in January by the Trump administration as part of an aggressive push to cull the federal workforce. More senior-level employees are expected to accept a second resignation offer issued more recently, the officials said. 

“Everybody I’ve talked with is just waiting for the shoe to drop and hear that they’re being cut or that the agency is being downsized,” said one senior official who, like other current employees, spoke with The Trace on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “I’ve never seen a work environment like this. Morale is abysmal.” 

In some quarters, I have no doubt that’s true. But I’ve spoken to others with direct knowledge and contact with current ATF staff who tell me that many field agents are relieved by the changes; not just in terms of personnel, but in the agency’s activities. Longtime ATF official Robert Cekada, for example, was one of those pushing hard for the ATF to rescind its zero tolerance policy towards minor paperwork errors made by federal firearms licensees, and that initiative was formally undone about the same time that he replaced Richardson as the agency’s number two. 

🚨UPDATE🚨

ATF Assistant Director Megan Bennett has been fired, Ammoland News reports. Bennett & her department:

❌Gave former ATF Director Dettlebach a “ghost gun” as a retirement gift.

❌Ignored a legal injunction & forbade a GOA member from attaching a brace to his pistol. https://t.co/INqieL09k1 pic.twitter.com/SZq1eoz5VQ

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) April 22, 2025

According to The Trace, Bennett was reached for comment at her office yesterday and said “she was still employed by the agency with no immediate plans to retire,” so it’s unclear whether the Ammoland report was actually incorrect or merely premature. 

Patel, who did double duty at the ATF while also serving as the director of the FBI, has been replaced as Acting Director by Daniel Driscoll, who also has a full time job as Secretary of the Army. It’s unclear how long Driscoll is expected to remain on the job, or if Trump will nominate anyone to serve as a permanent director going forward. 

Mark Jones, a former ATF special agent who held various supervisory roles within the agency before retiring in 2011, said the leadership changes seemed part of a Trump administration strategy to render the ATF “rudderless.” Republicans often vilify the ATF because of its position as the gun industry’s regulator, and some have proposed abolishing the agency entirely, though such a move would require congressional approval.

“Is there a better way to make sure that the agency is ineffective than to put someone in charge who has no background in either law enforcement or industry regulation and is working on a part-time basis?” Jones said.

Jones and other former employees cited a March Justice Department memo proposing to merge the ATF and Drug Enforcement Administration as a potential signal of the White House’s intentions. They said Driscoll may serve as a placeholder leader until the Trump administration can gather the necessary congressional support for combining the two agencies.

Note these are former employees, and Jones hasn’t worked for the ATF in well over a decade, so I don’t put a lot of stock into their theories. Even if the Trump administration did try to combine the ATF and DEA into a single agency, it would still be tasked with enforcing federal gun laws and would continue to serve as the agency overseeing the firearms industry. 

The biggest question on the minds of gun owners (or at least this one) is when will the Biden-era rules adopted and enforced by the ATF be repealed? The process of making a new rule that supersedes an older one is fairly time-intensive and won’t happen overnight. We know that the DOJ is, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi, currently “reviewing” those Biden-era rules, but we have yet to see any formal notice of rolling back the rules on stabilizing braces, who is “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms, or treating unfinished frames and receivers as fully functioning firearms. While morale within the ATF may be falling, gun owners’ frustration at the relatively slow pace of change continues to grow.