Yes, It’s Time to Abolish the ATF

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is far from the biggest federal law enforcement agency within the United States government, but it’s easily one of the most impressive.

No, not in a good way.

Despite its size, the ATF has a long and impressive history of failure, covering up, and generally making the case for why government shouldn’t be blindly trusted.

As Lee Williams writes at his Substack, it’s time to abolish the ATF.

No one makes the case that it’s time to end the ATF better than the ATF.

Rather than allowing the agency to continue on its own or merging it with the DEA as has been recently discussed, President Donald J. Trump should put the agency out of our misery before its agents kill yet another innocent American or violate someone else’s civil rights.

If action is not taken, more innocent Americans will die, that much is certainly true. In fact, it’s guaranteed.

No other federal law enforcement agency has a bloodier history, and it is the blood of innocent Americans that will forever taint the ATF.

In fact, killing innocent Americans in their homes is what the ATF appears very willing to do.

They did it on February 28, 1993, at a small religious compound outside of Waco, Texas, and ATF Agent Tyler Cowart did it on March 19, 2024, when he shot and killed a 53-year-old Arkansas airport executive who had never committed a crime.

Those responsible for ATF’s atrocities have never been held accountable.

Williams notes how the ATF tries to frame the completely accurate and just criticism they got after Waco as them being misjudged, all while repeating the sins of the past.

Good, decent people have been threatened, harassed, imprisoned, and outright killed because of the ATF and their overzealous attempt to treat lawful gun owners as criminals. Williams has a partial list, and I’ve seen all of those names before.

The truth is that the ATF shouldn’t be viewed as the enemy of lawful gun owners. The fact that they are, though, is a direct response to the agency’s activities. Zero tolerance for gun stores didn’t help, but the hostility existed long before the Biden administration stepped in and basically told them to do what we’d guess most of them wanted to do all along.

Oh, and let’s not forget about Operation Fast and Furious, where they literally armed the cartels, then used the fact that these guns came from the United States to help try and justify gun control that would make things harder for you and me during the Obama administration.

Sure, that was the administration’s call, but let’s be honest, no one in the ATF had an issue with it, now did they?

One thing, though, that needs to be considered is what happens after the ATF is abolished. Unless the bill eliminating the agency also eliminates all federal gun control laws–which would be dope, but I don’t see it happening–someone will have to take on enforcement of those laws. It’ll never fly without it.

And if you’re not very, very careful, the sins of the past will return.

Editor’s Note: The ATF has a long and “storied” history of assaulting our Second Amendment rights.

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