By: Anthony Morelli
Abolishing the ATF is something gun owners have supported for years.
But one gun magazine apparently does not agree.
And they published a bizarre editorial that disappointed gun advocates.
In most pro-Second Amendment circles, abolishing the ATF is not a particularly controversial position, as the agency has not been around for very long and routinely harasses gun owners.
Even the more moderate Second Amendment supporters will still generally acknowledge that the ATF is not a very useful agency, and that America could easily do without it.
However, one prominent author at The Reload, which is a widely-read gun publication, apparently does not agree.
For whatever reason, this author decided to submit a piece, which was then published, defending the existence of the ATF and suggesting that getting rid of it would somehow make things worse.
It takes some serious mental gymnastics to get to this conclusion, but that is what the author tries to sell in his piece that he wrote.
This argument is highly unlikely to be persuasive to virtually anyone who owns guns, but he clearly feels strongly about it, so he submitted an article defending the ATF’s existence.
Here’s what he said in The Reload: “President Donald Trump’s successful 2024 campaign has Second Amendment advocates facing a dilemma. They can either try to use their political capital to destroy the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) or work within it to accomplish their preferred policy goals.”
It’s true that Trump is facing a dilemma over shutting down the ATF or keeping it, but the dilemma is more about whether he’s willing to spend political capital on the Second Amendment.
This author isn’t making that case though, and instead he is trying to suggest that keeping the ATF is actually somehow a good thing for the Second Amendment.
His op-ed continues, “Instead of trying to eliminate ATF, gun advocates would fare better working through ATF to implement their preferred regulatory reforms.”
“Shutting down ATF would do nothing to relieve the legal restrictions imposed by federal gun-control laws. These restrictions stem directly from laws passed by Congress, and only Congress can change or eliminate them. Gun advocates are unlikely to find sixty votes in the Senate to repeal or reform most federal gun laws. Moreover, to the extent that Congress has delegated some authority to regulate firearms with the executive branch, federal firearms laws place the burden of regulating firearms with the Attorney General, not with ATF.”
It’s true that the ATF did not create gun control laws, and that eliminating the ATF would not have the effect of getting rid of all federal gun control laws.
However, no one is making that argument. What people are saying is that the ATF enforces gun control laws with a level of enthusiasm and aggression that makes them a threat to the Constitution.
This article does not make a persuasive case against that, and should do nothing to change the attitude of gun owners that the ATF does not need to exist.