The ATF needs to go away once and for all. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean gun control vanishes with them. Still, the agency has a long and storied history of screwing up and killing innocent people, all in the name of justifying its existence.
But a plan from the Trump administration to make that happen has quietly been scuttled.
The original plan floated was to merge the ATF with the FBI. While the FBI doesn't necessarily have the greatest track record when it comes to respecting people's rights, they have enough going on that they don't need to make a name for the agency by engaging in some troubling tactics.
However, the Trump administration had another plan and proposed merging the agency with the DEA instead. That didn't fill anyone's heart with joy, to say the least, because the DEA's track record on civil liberties makes the FBI look like what the ACLU wants its donors to think it is.
Luckily, that plan is no longer on the table.
After pushback from both gun rights and gun control groups, the Trump administration has quietly abandoned its plan to merge the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to people briefed on the matter.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced plans last year to merge ATF into the DEA, a proposal that would require Congressional budgetary approval and is part of the early administration-wide effort to shrink the size of federal government agencies.
Officials involved in the proposal told CNN at the time of Blanche’s proposal that the two agencies had different missions — ATF is tasked with investigating violent crime, gun trafficking, arson and bombings, while DEA agents enforce the nation’s drug laws — but they naturally went hand-in-hand.“Where there are drugs there are usually guns, and where there are guns there are usually drugs,” one of the officials previously told CNN.
The effort was re-affirmed in June, when Justice Department officials suggested eliminating the ATF “as a separate component, with its functions merged into the Drug Enforcement Administration,” leaving the DEA as “a single component that will address violent crime, drug enforcement, and crimes relating to firearms” in their budget proposal.
Administration officials’ expectations that pro-Trump gun-rights groups would welcome the plans were dashed almost immediately.
The truth is that gun rights advocates really want federal gun control laws repealed in totality. While that might just be wishful thinking, the truth is that the ATF is the only federal law enforcement agency explicitly tasked with curtailing a constitutional right. To say that people are going to have a problem with that is putting it mildly.
And putting them with the DEA wouldn't make it much better, even if Blanche's comments about guns and drugs often co-existing.
While it appears we're going to be stuck with the ATF for the foreseeable future, it's still better than an ATF/DEA hybrid that would take your stuff, shoot your dog, and leave you wondering what just happened.
Instead, let's just focus on repealing all those terrible gun laws. That makes the ATF's mission more about alcohol and tobacco than anything else.
