By: Anthony Morelli
The ATF is facing opposition from all corners.
There are many people who want to see them go away.
And one congressman just demanded that the ATF shut down forever.
Ever since its inception, the ATF has been an incredibly controversial agency, and that has only increased and not decreased over the past few years.
Since Trump took office, there has been more excitement and expectation than ever before that the ATF might be changed in a fundamental way, if not completely shut down as an agency altogether.
Although Trump hasn’t signaled he is going to do that, there are calls from Congress that are growing louder and louder to take decisive action on the ATF.
Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri has been one of the leading voices on this, and many American voters are behind him.
Of course, his bill has an extremely heavy lift to get through Congress, thanks to the 60-vote filibuster that still exists in the U.S. Senate.
But if his bill continues to attract more and more attention, the pressure will grow on the administration to do something to rein in the ATF permanently.
According to the Daily Signal, “Waco lives on in infamy, but it is a flashpoint in a wider record of controversial behavior from the ATF. Incidents such as Ruby Ridge, Operation Fast and Furious, and the fatal shooting of Brian Malinowski in March 2024 continue to raise serious concerns about the agency’s strategies and use of force.”
Here’s what Burlison said: “Women and children were burned alive in a building all because the ATF believed that David Koresh and the people that lived there were changing the triggers to turn semi-automatic rifles to automatic.”
The controversies that the article referenced were indeed massive tragedies, as Malinowski did not have to lose his life, and neither did the people in the Branch Davidian cult.
These killings happened because the ATF went in with tactics that were simply too aggressive, and it led to chaos and violence.
The article continues, “A long-time advocate of Second Amendment rights and ATF antagonist, Burlison has spoken to members of the Waco community who knew the Branch Davidians. ‘When you talk to people that live in that area, that knew them, sure they thought they were kind of a goofy group, but certainly nice people,’ Burlison told The Daily Signal.”
Just because people have strange religious beliefs and practices doesn’t give the government license to be violent towards them, and that is the point Burlison is making.
Of course, Waco was a long time ago, and most people at the ATF today weren’t responsible for it, but the shooting of Malinowski was much more recent.
And it shows that the organizational approach that the ATF takes to confrontation is still very suspect and has not fundamentally changed in the years since Waco.
This calls into question the very mission and purpose of the agency, and Burlison has clearly made up his mind that the ATF simply needs to go away permanently.