What SHOULD the Future Hold for ATF?

I don’t think any gun rights supporter actually likes the ATF, with the possible exception of any that might work for the ATF. No, I don’t understand why anyone who values the Second Amendment would work for the one agency explicitly designed to restrict a constitutionally protected right, but they might well have reasons.

Now that Donald Trump is returning to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a lot of gun rights supporters are giddy at the thought of the ATF being completely dismantled. In fact, his first pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, introduced a bill meant to do just that while he was in the House. Now that Gaetz has withdrawn his name from consideration, though, that’s up in the air. 

Then again, that might not be a terrible thing, as The Reload’s Robert Leider notes:

Most regulations that burden gun owners and dealers come directly from federal firearms laws: the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the National Firearms Act. The Gun Control Act—not ATF—requires individuals to become licensed dealers if they sell guns primarily for profit. It generally prohibits selling guns in interstate commerce, except by individuals who have federal firearms licenses. It restricts the importation of firearms that lack a sporting purpose. And both the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act impose significant restrictions on short-barreled rifles and shotguns and firearm suppressors (often called silencers). 

Shutting down ATF would do nothing to relieve the legal restrictions imposed by federal gun-control laws. These restrictions stem directly from laws passed by Congress, and only Congress can change or eliminate them. Gun advocates are unlikely to find sixty votes in the Senate to repeal or reform most federal gun laws. Moreover, to the extent that Congress has delegated some authority to regulate firearms with the executive branch, federal firearms laws place the burden of regulating firearms with the Attorney General, not with ATF. ATF only exercises functions that the Attorney General has delegated. If ATF did not exist, the Attorney General would either need to handle these functions personally or delegate the functions to another bureau within the Department of Justice.

Either option would be counterproductive for gun owners. The Office of the Attorney General lacks the ability to issue over 100,000 federal firearm licenses and to approve approximately 1,000,000 National Firearms Act applications. Given this, it’s likely these functions will get transferred to another bureau, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). A move like that would likely come at a high cost and comes with the risk of the transfer going poorly. 

 Moreover, the FBI (or another Department of Justice agency) may end up regulating firearms much the same way that ATF has to this point.

That’s a fair point.

The ATF is screwed up, but dismantling it–much as it would amuse me to see, to be clear–wouldn’t really solve some of the underlying issues. Especially when federal law enforcement has indicated their own anti-gun leanings for quite some time. Let’s remember that the FBI pressured people to give up their gun rights so as to avoid prosecution. The Secret Service used the same form.

If they’re willing to pressure people they don’t want to prosecute into signing away their right to keep and bear arms, can we really trust any of them to be any better than the ATF was?

Not really. Sure, the FBI might not be a massive issue under Kash Patel, but do we really think Patel will run the FBI indefinitely? Of course not. That means we have to think of what they could do with someone at the helm we despise.

The issue here is that the ATF needs to be seriously reformed, but so do our gun control laws in general. That’s a better focus for our time, especially now that the Chevron deference is a thing of the past. Now, regulatory agencies can’t just concoct whatever rules they want and the courts just defer to them over it.

Dismantling the ATF would be satisfying, but the victory would be short-lived unless we do a whole lot more.