What Kash Patel Should Do As Acting ATF Director

I spent the weekend with a number of Second Amendment advocates, including some names you’ll probably recognize. That’s where I first heard that Kash Patel, in addition to being director of the FBI, was named to helm the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He wasn’t who I thought would get tapped, but the general consensus was that this was a good thing.

And I agree.

But now that Patel is in charge, what is on the agenda?

He started at the FBI by getting rid of some of the dead weight in that agency as well as some who used their positions to push their own agendas. Now, he’s got a chance to do that again.

With Kash Patel now in the position of Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the agency is in for a shake-up.

One thing that Patel can do is get rid of problem employees who have gone out of their way to infringe on the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms. This purge has already started with the firing of the ATF’s Chief Council, Pam Hicks. Hicks was a rabid anti-gun attorney that chose to defend very constitutionally dubious rules. Although Hicks was a good first step, without removing other problem members, nothing will change.

The first person that Patel should remove from the Bureau is the ATF’s Deputy Director, Marvin Richardson. Mr. Richardson has been behind some of the ATF’s most controversial rules. He was the driving force behind the reclassification of pistols equipped with braces. Mr. Richardson proposed reclassifying pistols with braces and unfinished firearms frames during a 2020 meeting with the Biden transition team without President Trump’s knowledge.

…

Mr. Patel should look at Matthew Varisco. Mr. Varisco is the ATF Assistant Director for the Office of Field Operations. When he worked out of the Philadelphia Field Office, he pushed the targeting of companies selling firearms precursor parts, including issuing a cease-and-desist letter to JSD Supply. This action was taken before the rule change of pistol frames. He pioneered the idea of firearms “structuring.” According to Varisco, if someone buys firearms parts from multiple companies to build a working firearm, that is “structuring.” This use of the term was the first time it was used outside banking crimes. He claimed that the possibility of “structuring” meant that all 80% firearm frames needed to be treated like completed guns. Mr. Varisco’s idea of “structuring” made it into the final rule.

Other names are, of course, mentioned, and I happen to agree. Far too many people achieved success in the ATF by supporting gun control, which would expand the agency’s authority by virtue of trampling on the rights of the American people and by reinterpreting rules as much as possible to expand it.

And a lot of names went into that.

However, there’s a lot more to be done than just clean house. Patel needs to also purge the ATF of some of the problematic interpretations of federal law, and do so in the way Brandon Herrera talked about in a video regarding what he would do as ATF director. No, the AK Guy isn’t calling the shots at the ATF, but Herrera says he came up with this after close consultation with groups like the Firearms Policy Coalition and Gun Owners of America and they happen to be smart ideas.

Whether the end goal is to merge the ATF with the FBI and get rid of the agency entirely or not, the truth is that we have a golden opportunity to preserve gun rights for the next generation. Kash Patel strikes me as the kind of guy who would be interested in doing it just this way, too, so I’m incredibly hopeful going forward.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump’s appointment of Kash Patel (and Dan Bongino at the FBI), we’ve got the opportunity to make the FBI great again and bring the ATF to heel. The two-tiered system of justice that we’ve seen from the Biden administration is a thing of the past and the bureau is on its way back to being America’s premiere law enforcement agency.

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