A New Name Emerges as Potential ATF Pick

Since Donald Trump won his resounding victory last month, gun owners have been eagerly waiting to see what he plans on doing with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in his second term. While Trump has made scores of official appointments over the past few weeks, he’s remained quiet about who will head up the ATF, but Semafor reported over the weekend that one contender met with Trump’s transition team last week: Blake Masters.

The Arizona venture capitalist, who previously ran for U.S. Senate against Mark Kelly, and narrowly lost a competitive GOP primary for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District earlier this year, was originally interested in heading up the Presidential Personnel Office, but Semafor reports that after Trump tapped Sergio Gor, who heads up Donald Trump, Jr. publishing company Masters has turned his attention to the ATF.

If Masters does get the nod, he won’t have an easy path in the Senate — simply due to the history of the ATF director position, which involves oversight of politically sensitive gun policies. President Joe Biden pulled his first ATF nominee, David Chipman, before his second nominee, Steve Dettelbach, was confirmed in 2022.

Even that’s something of an accomplishment; Trump’s ATF nominee Chuck Canterbury was withdrawn in 2020, and Dettelbach was only the second ATF director ever confirmed by the Senate. 

Masters may appeal to pro-gun Republicans, though, having campaigned as a pro-gun Senate candidate – with video proof. Republicans can afford up to three defections on any nominee.

In case you’ve forgotten or missed it during Masters’ run for the U.S. Senate seat in Arizona a few years ago, here’s a reminder. 

“The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting. It’s about protecting your family and your country,” Masters solemnly said, adding “without gun rights you have no rights.” 

That’s absolutely true, but it’s also not something we’ve ever heard from an ATF director before. 

Steve Dettelbach certainly hasn’t said anything like that. Instead, he’s pushed for Congress to pass more gun control laws, including a ban on so-called assault weapons and the implementation of universal background checks. 

Masters, on the other hand, builds his own guns, including the unserialized firearms that the Biden administration has targeted by going after unfinished frames and receivers. 

He started with a block of aluminum, open-source computer files from the Internet, and an expensive CNC milling machine. It concluded with a rifle, and he told RCP that by now he has “probably made four or five successfully.” At first, the build was “definitely a weekend project.” Aluminum shavings would block a sensor somewhere, or a bug in the code would buck the whole process. “Things can go wrong anytime you mix hardware with software,” he explained, admitting that along the way “I ruined a few lowers.”

“It’s definitely harder than they want to say in the Rose Garden,” Masters reported. He admits, though, that after considerable practice, “I could easily do one in probably a half hour.” But where Biden sees a grave and obvious danger to the public welfare, Masters sees a check on the government – a modern process whereby digital code provides a do-it-yourself bulwark to a centuries-old right.

Masters believes that when the Founders penned the Second Amendment they were both guaranteeing the right to own guns and anticipating that citizens would build them. “In the colonial days, you were expected to know how to not just fire your weapon, but to reload it,” he said, “and probably to fix low-level things that went wrong with it too.” If gunsmithing wasn’t in your wheelhouse, then “there were people in your community that could literally make them if you didn’t know how to do that yourself.”

Although neighborhood gunsmiths hardly exist these days, Masters believes that the principles of individual gun ownership still hold. What is alien, he said, is “this idea that everything needs to be centralized, regulated, dictated, and promulgated from Washington, D.C. That is a very modern idea.”

Technology has eclipsed even that contemporary sentiment, according to Masters. The Biden administration, he believes, is just trying to play catch up. “What they want to do is shut down hobbyists and enthusiasts like me, and ultimately, they want people not to have this capacity,” he said.

An ATF Director who believes that an important part of his job is protecting our Second Amendment rights from government intrusion would be a welcome change from Dettelbach. Masters isn’t the only potential pick who holds that ideology, but I suspect that Second Amendment groups would cheer his nomination if Trump does give him the nod.