In theory, most federal agencies shouldn't have a preference in who is president. We know how biased pretty much all of the federal bureaucracy is, but hypothetically, it shouldn't matter to them. They've got a job to do and they're going to have to do it.
But the ATF is a different matter entirely because it’s an anti-gun federal agency, and it’s digging in for the new era.
See, the ATF has loved life under Joe Biden. Why wouldn't it? Biden was more than willing to give the bureau more ways to infringe on people's rights and to pretty much look the other way on any case of overreach.
But Sleepy Joe is out while Trump is back, and they're digging in because the ATF knows it won't like what's coming:
The A.T.F. faces a deeply uncertain future, and there is little doubt that difficult times lie ahead — perhaps in the form of even deeper funding cuts aimed at punishing the agency for the flurry of regulatory actions he undertook.
Even before the election, congressional Republicans already succeeded in cutting the bureau’s budget. In the 2024 budget year, they inserted a $47 million cut to its modest $1.6 billion annual budget, at a time when other federal agencies were seeing increases to keep pace with inflation.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly promised to immediately fire Mr. Dettelbach and to quickly reverse many of the Biden administration’s most important changes. In the interview, Mr. Dettelbach said he planned to quit before Mr. Trump took office.
Mr. Trump, in speeches, has singled out a rule that increased regulation of so-called stabilizing braces that make it easier to use a pistol as a long gun that is easier to aim. He has also pointed to Mr. Dettelbach’s effort to expand background checks on weapons sold at gun shows, to include private kitchen-table gun sales and online firearms marketplaces.
“Under a Trump administration all of those Biden disasters get ripped up and torn up during my first week, but maybe my first day in office,” Mr. Trump told a gathering of gun rights activists during the campaign.
Frankly, this is how it should be.
OK, that might be overstating things. How it should be is for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to be a convenience store chain located in every city in the country, not a federal agency that basically tries to regulate everything that makes America great.
The truth, though, is that the ATF wasn't just allowed to run amuck during the Biden administration, it was encouraged to run amuck. The White House wanted the agency to cross any and every line imaginable during the Biden administration's war against the right to keep and bear arms. For those who run the agency, it was like Christmas for four years.
Now, the ATF gets Donald Trump, who has been thoroughly reamed by the powers that be, and it's inclined to play nice with the status quo this time around. It thought he was bad during his first term? HA!
The ATF better dig in, because if Trump put me in charge of the ATF, what would be left when four years are over would be little more than a smoking crater where it used to stand.
