Poor, poor pitiful ATF

Free the ATF From the Gun Lobby

This meme of the ATF as an oppressed, battered victim of the NRA patriarchy and bullying gun owners gets hauled out and dusted off periodically, including whenever somebody’s trying to get F-Troop an actual director. Precisely why anybody’d want the job is a perennial mystery to me, but the same can be said for the mind of pretty much anybody who craves power and once again I digress.

The greatest threat to the future of the republic, say the gun grabbers, is all those guns in the hands of criminals – and people who certainly would be criminals if only we could get their property banned.

One of the best ways to stem [the] flow of guns is to identify which gun dealers are improperly selling to criminals. Congress, however, has made this as hard as possible. Out of fear of ATF creating a gun registry—which would inevitably be used to confiscate all of America’s guns (of course!)—gun-control opponents have forced ATF to trace guns the way 17th-century monks copied texts: by hand.

The funny thing is, the “gun owners pick on ATF and keep it hamstrung” trope is not entirely untrue. Left carefully unsaid in Winkler’s diatribe is this: ATF has never had or even heard about any power it could not egregiously abuse. Based solely on their record, the brave boys and girls of F-Troop make the most steroid-deranged DEA goon look like a fuzzy-haired Keene Kid by comparison. Following GCA68, ATF set out to use its new, vaguely-defined but extensive powers against gun dealers and collectors struggling to remain legal under the new onslaught of laws, whose only crimes often were trusting the word of ATF agents as to what those laws actually said.

Since doing the logical thing and simply abolishing the bureau is apparently out of the question, the gun owner community has dedicated decades of effort toward keeping ATF away from the tools that would make it an effective, competent oppressor once more. Tools such as national gun registration. Yes, that’s a sore subject among gun owners. There are excellent reasons for that, though I wouldn’t expect Winkler to help his readers by pointing those reasons out.

To this day ATF management thinks nothing of using nefarious methods to prop up the claims of the gun-grabbers. When the lie – which has never been abandoned by this administration – that 90% of guns used in Mexican crimes came from America needed something like corroboration, ATF cheerfully spent on the order of 87 million tax dollars to make it so. Hundreds died as a direct result.

Note that I never even mentioned the word “Waco.” Because that would be piling on. God, how I hate the ATF.

I could keep this up all morning, but I need to go do something tractor-related before it gets too hot. Later.