PA Bill Number: SB1198

Title: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and ...

Description: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and .. ...

Last Action: Referred to AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS

Last Action Date: May 17, 2024

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Has the time come to abolish ATF? :: 03/09/2015

Today’s New York Times carries an Op-Ed about the unfolding controversy involving the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ attempt to ban the M855 cartridge for modern sport-utility rifles that now has the conspiracy theorists having fits because an exemption for the round was deleted in the latest regulations manual.

The ATF has issued a press release calling it a “publishing error” that has “no legal impact on the validity of the exemptions.” The agency says the regulations guide will be corrected in PDF format, but that may not satisfy a growing number of angry gun owners, many of whom think it is time for the agency to go.

Those gun owners have company on Capitol Hill. Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner has, according to The Hill, revived his legislation to abolish the ATF and incorporate its duties into other federal agencies.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn has also chimed in, telling Lone Star State journalists in a telephone conference that the agency seems to have its wires crossed. The Houston Chronicle quoted him Thursday.

“This seems to be symptomatic of the mentality that it’s ammunition and guns that cause crime, not people,” Cornyn reportedly observed. “It represents another attempted intrusion on the rights of law-abiding citizens that are protected under the Constitution.”

Columnist Lee Williams, writing in the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota earlier this week, was rather blunt. He said the ATF “is sick.”

“It needs to be put out of our misery,” Williams wrote. It did not seem as though he wrote that line with tongue-in-cheek.

The ATF has, under the Obama administration, tarnished up its reputation, perhaps irreparably. Operation Fast and Furious was a debacle of monumental proportions that is continuing to rack up a body count south of the border. Its other high-profile fiasco — the one that initially compelled Sensenbrenner to submit his legislation during the last Congress — was dubbed Operation Fearless. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel called it “botched,” which was mild considering what the newspaper found during an investigation.

Fast and Furious contributed directly to the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, and and it is still rolling up victims in Mexico. It’s not the first deadly debacle for the agency. Remember the Waco raid and its aftermath? David Koresh was apparently a loon, but the raid gave undeserved credibility to his apocalyptic prophecies.

ATF has become the agency gun owners love to hate. This dislike goes back decades and is littered with tales of misbehavior and lack of accountability. There’s even a website called CleanUpATF.org founded by agency employees that has allegations of perjury, fraud, waste, abuse and reprisal against whistleblowers.

Under Barack Obama, rogue behavior seems to have been excused in what many in the firearms community are convinced is a not-so-subtle war the administration has launched against the Second Amendment. Early on, Attorney General Eric Holder talked about renewing the ban on semi-autos. He unsuccessfully fought to keep Fast and Furious documents secret, and Obama extended executive privilege protection to thwart congressional oversight.

And now this proposed bullet ban has rekindled the distrust gun owners have for the agency, and the administration. The National Rifle Association has blasted the proposed ban, as has the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The Second Amendment Foundation this past week threatened legal action.

Maybe Sensenbrenner’s legislation is overkill, maybe not. Maybe it’s not the agency that needs to go, but the administration that seems to condone every effort to unnecessarily provoke the nation’s gun owners. The chance to change course comes in 2016.

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