Under the Biden administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives gained new authority, but after a tumultuous year, the agency’s director, Steven Dettelbach, plans to resign before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
In November, the ATF raided the home of Baltimore gun rights activist Mark “Choppa” Manley, but made no arrests or confiscations. Agents reportedly ordered Manley and family members out of their home at gunpoint, then checked serial numbers on his guns.
In March, ATF agents raided the home of Bryan Malinowski, the executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Ark., after gaining a search warrant alleging he was illegally selling guns. Malinowski was killed in an exchange of gunfire with agents.
A state prosecutor determined the shooting didn’t violate Arkansas state law. But in December, Malinowski’s widow sued the ATF to get back confiscated firearms and ammunition, noting the government proved no illegal activity, and said his gun sales were legal.
The Malinowski shooting garnered the attention of members of Congress, including House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who sought explanations from the ATF on the matter.
“Federal three-letter agencies always benefit from a lack of oversight,” William Sack, legal director for the Second Amendment Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “Without question, the ATF has proven time and time again that it deserves a diligent and critical eye on it at all times.”
The Malinowski shooting could be among the clearest examples of needed oversight, he added.
“After taping over his Ring door camera, these ATF agents stormed Malinowski’s home unannounced, and when Malinowski did what anyone would do—respond to their door being kicked in in the middle of the night, and stepped out into the hallway with a gun in his hand—the ATF shot him in the head and killed him,” Sack said. “These escalationary tactics are entirely unnecessary and serve only to terrorize the gun-owning community as a whole. Not to mention, the very legal grounds which drew ATF’s attention to Mr. Malinowski to begin with are questionable at best.”
The ATF contends it has kept Americans safer.
“ATF plays a critical role in keeping the American people safe by enforcing federal firearms laws passed by Congress, supporting state and local law enforcement operations with investigative leads through ATF crime-gun intelligence tools, and protecting communities from violent crime by removing thousands of violent offenders from the streets each year,” ATF spokesperson Kristina Mastropasqua told The Daily Signal.
Dettelbach told CBS News it would be a big mistake for the incoming administration to make cuts to the agency, and noted, “In the assassination attempt on [then-candidate for President Donald] Trump, ATF identified the shooter in that case in under 30 minutes.”
The ATF’s enforcement was beefed up during the Biden administration. The White House boasted last spring that the ATF revoked 245 federal firearms licenses, also known as FFLs, for gun dealers in the past two years.
Those included what the administration referred to as “cracking down on rogue gun dealers,” with a “zero tolerance policy” for any first-time offenses of transferring a firearm to a prohibited person, failing to run a background check, or failing to respond to an ATF tracking request.
Last week, seven Republican senators led by Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming wrote to Dettelbach to request that the agency focus on assisting the transition of administrations to Trump.
“Toward that end, we recommend and urge that ATF suspend and refrain from issuing any further rulemaking, ATF rulings, open letters to the industry or other publications or reports (including academic research reports) except reports generated in direct support of specific criminal investigations, from making formal recommendations to Congress, launching any new regulatory initiatives or changing any policies, or reorganizing the organizational structure of ATF,” the GOP letter stated. “Any new policy initiatives undertaken at this late stage will only create instability and detract from the transition and ATF’s focus on its primary mission.”
Meanwhile, Reps. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo, introduced the Abolish the ATF Act. The bill has seven GOP cosponsors.
“The ATF is emblematic of the deep-state bureaucracy that believes it can infringe on constitutional liberties without consequence,” Burlison said in a public statement. “If this agency cannot uphold its duty to serve the people within the framework of the Constitution, it has no place in our government.”
Sack, of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he’s hopeful for significant reforms.
“It’s really anyone’s guess what changes are coming under the Trump administration. What [the Second Amendment Foundation] would like to see is the immediate reversal of the ‘zero [tolerance] policy’ stance the Biden ATF had taken in regards to revoking FFLs for extremely minor clerical errors,” he said. “Licensed dealers all over the country have had their livelihoods stripped from them for completely innocuous conduct that in years past was easily rectified.”
Sack didn’t have suggestions as to who Trump should name to head up the agency.
“But whoever it is, what we would like to see from them right away are immediate internal policy changes to discontinue the unnecessary use of escalationary and violent tactics,” he said. “The use of violent [no-knock] warrants in the investigation of what essentially boils down to paperwork or tax crimes is completely unacceptable.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
