Congress Should Reject the DOJ’s Dangerous ATF-DEA Merger Plan

At a time when the federal government should be working to restore public trust and reduce bureaucratic overreach, the Department of Justice is instead proposing one of the most alarming consolidations of law enforcement authority in recent memory. Attorney General Pamela Bondi’s plan to eliminate the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and merge its functions into the Drug Enforcement Administration is not a modernization effort – it’s a dangerous power grab.

Bondi has attempted to justify this merger by claiming – quite oddly – that “guns and drugs go together” and that combining the two agencies is a “great marriage.” But there’s nothing great about this proposal. It would conflate two fundamentally different missions and create a bloated, less accountable “super-agency” with sweeping enforcement authority.

Indeed, recent history offers a cautionary tale about merging large federal agencies. The 2003 consolidation of 22 federal agencies into the Department of Homeland Security was pitched as a way to “improve coordination.” As we have all witnessed, rather than streamlining operations and focusing on violent terrorists, DHS became a sprawling, paramilitary behemoth. An ATF-DEA merger would follow the same footsteps. Despite Attorney General Bondi’s saccharine rhetoric, the bottom-line result of her proposal is clear: more concentrated federal power and reduced oversight.

A combined ATF-DEA would not only have a larger scope of authority and broader mission, but it would also have fewer checks and balances. Folding the ATF into the DEA would bury firearm-related enforcement within a larger and more aggressive federal agency. This would make the ATF’s firearm-area actions harder to monitor – and the agency more likely to engage in activities beyond what the statutes and Constitution permit.

Attorney General Bondi’s merger is a bad idea as a matter of first principles. But it would also put peaceable American gun owners – as well as their constitutionally protected firearms and ammunition – in the same federal crosshairs as illegal drugs and violent cartels. This is a terrible idea under any circumstances, but it would be incredibly dangerous if and when someone like Joe Biden, who regularly abused executive authority in his quest against Second Amendment rights, takes office. This is not thoughtful reform – it’s a troubling move backward.

While the merger proposal is itself a nightmare for Americans, the DOJ’s FY 2026 budget request does include one modest step in the right direction: proposed cuts to the ATF’s personnel and enforcement capacity. The plan would eliminate over 1,000 positions, purportedly reducing inspections by 40 percent. That’s a welcome development, but it’s far from sufficient. The ATF’s long history of regulatory abuse and hostility toward lawful gun owners demands far more than just trimming around the edges. These reductions should mark the beginning of a broader effort to dismantle the agency’s unconstitutional authority, not serve as window dressing for a dangerous and unnecessary merger.

Indeed, the right answer is to eliminate the very unconstitutional federal gun control laws that underpin the ATF’s enforcement authority. Beyond that, advocacy organizations including the Firearms Policy Coalition have provided the Trump Administration with many proposed reforms, all of which would improve the lives of law-abiding Americans as well as their access to rights and instruments protected by the Constitution. Rather than creating massive new problems for gun owners, the DOJ should instead focus on implementing these proposed reforms, stop engaging in anti-Second Amendment litigation and prosecutions, and support important Second Amendment challenges in the courts, especially the United States Supreme Court.

If the DOJ is truly committed to fundamentally overhauling how the government approaches the Second Amendment, it would prioritize these transformational changes. But Attorney General Bondi’s merger would make the American people play “Whac-A-Mole” with those responsible for enforcing federal gun laws throughout the United States.

At the end of the day, federal gun laws are enforced against everyone, not just violent criminals and drug cartels. Attorney General Bondi’s proposed ATF-DEA merger wants to treat constitutionally protected firearms like illegal drugs – even enforced by the same people – to make it easier and cheaper for them to regulate firearms and the peaceable Americans who make, sell, and own them. It would also concentrate massive law enforcement powers in a larger, less accountable agency, make protecting Second Amendment rights more difficult, and put gun owners and drug dealers into the same enforcement regime.

The totality of this fundamentally unwise merger would undermine the oversight essential to safeguarding peaceable Americans’ Second Amendment rights, but also create another layer of sprawling bureaucracy – just like the DHS merger. Americans deserve better than a federal government that responds to criticism by becoming more opaque and more powerful. We do not need an ATF-DEA “super-agency.” We need accountable, limited government, and we need it now.

Congress should reject this dangerous proposal and protect Americans from a deep state that wants to get deeper.