For more than 20 years, lawmakers and think tanks have sought to move the duties of the
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms & Explosives to other agencies.
Among the nation's most avid gun owners, there isn't a more hated agency than the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. And the ATF's latest proposal to
prohibit one kind of 5.56 mm ammunition popular for use in AR-15 semi-automatic rifles might put some oomph behind the effort to get rid of the agency, rolling its responsibilities into others, including the FBI. Although the proposed bullet ban wasn't the original catalyst, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin last week
reintroduced the bill he first introduced last July to abolish the agency. His bill would turn over ATF's duties to the FBI and, in matters of tobacco, the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Last week, Sensenbrenner, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and 235 other lawmakers signed a letter to ATF Chief B. Todd Jones demanding that he abandon the bullet proposal.
Because the targeted bullets can pierce an armored vest, the proposed ban would, ATF officials say, protect law enforcement officers. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, armor-piercing bullets are barred unless it can be shown that they are primarily used for "sporting purposes." Many hunters do use AR-15s chambered in various calibers to hunt. Although only a single bullet would be banned—M855 green tip or SS109 rounds with certain types of metal cores—and 168 others would still be allowed, gun groups say the proposal could be the beginning of bans on other bullets:
It’s a blatant “power grab” that runs counter to the spirit of the Second Amendment, said Michael Hammond, legislative counsel at Gun Owners of America.
“They’re going to take out the gun by taking out the ammunition,” Hammond told The Hill. “If you have a gun that has no bullets in it, you can use it as a door stop or hit people over the head with it, but it’s basically no longer a gun."
But proposing bullet bans is hardly the only problem at ATF. The so-called Fast and Furious program under the Obama administration and a Bush-era predecessor, Wide Receiver, had allowed firearms to get into the hands of criminals, including members of the Mexican drug cartels as the agency tried to track illegal gun sales beyond the low-level buyers so that higher-ups could be prosecuted. The revelations about the programs and the alleged withholding of documents led to the citing of Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress.
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Last year, the Government Accountability Office reported that the agency was plagued with high turnover, difficulty in defining its role and continued problems with leadership. In late 2013, an investigative report by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel found the ATF had been involved in storefront stings that, among other things, tricked people with mental disabilities and then arrested them for being involved in illegal activities.
It's not just conservatives who think getting rid of the ATF makes sense. Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Ohio introduced a bill in 1993 to abolish it. Two years ago, right after the slaughter of first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut, the progressive Center for American Progress recommended that the FBI begin absorbing the agency. That was at a time the ATF hadn't had a permanent director for seven years because gun advocacy groups objected to every nominee and the Senate wouldn't confirm one until April 2013.
Fifteen years ago, the Commission on the Advancement of Federal law Enforcement reported:
In 1993, Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review, reciting the same concern about "too many cooks spoil the broth," had the following to say about this recurrent theme with ATF: "...we will move toward combining the enforcement functions of the Bureau of alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) into the FBI and merge BATF's regulatory and revenue functions into the IRS."
To put it as simply as possible: the collection of taxes and the regulation of the alcohol, wine, beer, and tobacco industries do not contribute to effective enforcement of the Nation's firearms and explosives Jaws. ATF Jacks a clear mission and sense of purpose because of the clash of disparate jurisdictional responsibilities. On the one hand, ATF enforces the firearms and explosives laws that are critical components of the Attorney General's public safety duties. On the other hand, ATF has responsibility for a traditional IRS function: the collection of taxes on luxury items, specifically, distilled spirits, beer, wine, and tobacco. This small agency has for more than 30 years attempted to reconcile the irreconcilable. The same organization houses functions that are at cross purposes, feeding internal competition for resources and detracting from a unified law enforcement policy. The task of enforcing firearms and explosives laws can best be carried out in the FBI.
Moving ATF's duties to other federal agencies has obviously made sense to people of various ideologies and perspectives on gun laws for quite some time. Gun Owners of America and other gun advocates would like, of course, to see many of ATF's duties disappear altogether rather than be passed to the FBI.
While the absorption of ATF's functions by other federal agencies makes sense, it would be encouraging if, in addition to this legislation, Sensenbrenner and the hundreds of other lawmakers who are demanding a bullet ban would follow up on some of the other proposals the Center for American Progress made two years ago, including requiring the better background checks that the majority of Americans support but that the National Rifle Association, GOA and gun advocates have done so much to squelch.