Ban F Troop???

The Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has been the source of ire on the right, especially since their most recent proposal to ban green tip AR-15 ammo. After the failed ban attempt, ATF Director B. Todd Jones decided to resign and take a job with the NFL.

Now even the left are coming out in agreement! The left seems to have tired of all the incompetence and some of the corruption in F Troop. The issue on the right is whether we are better served with more competent enforcement of bad laws.

Go read the whole thing at Town Hall HERE.

If they move it under the FBI, that’s going to be another cluster…

Two TOTALLY different mentalities there! Or they just boot the agents and hire new FBI agents.

Your thoughts?

Comments

Ban F Troop??? — 20 Comments

  1. The obvious solution is to eliminate most of their functions. The FBI needs to focus their efforts tracking criminals, not gun possessions, or Alcohol tax stamps, or tobacco sales. Even the explosives handling seems sufficiently covered by state law. Repeal all federal gun laws, federal Alcohol laws, Federal tobacco laws and federal explosives laws. Then it doesn’t matter who gets the BATFE rolled up inside it or what their mentality is. If it is just a matter of finding bureacrats jobs, put them in the parks department. Or even on the border control.

  2. I’ve said for years that the ATFE agency should be disbanded and the responsibility (without the people, who are hopelessly tainted) should go to two agencies. AT should go to Treasury, because this is mainly a tax collection process, and FE should go to the FBI. No personnel swaps, not budget swaps, just redline the ATFE and give the responsibility to the other agencies, to worry about when they have time to worry about it.

    • +1

      Revenue collection is a Treasury issue. Criminal investigation is the FEEBEES world.

      Treasury might take some of the agents but there is no chance in Hell the FBI will accept ATF agents in their ranks.

      The ATFE has some outstanding dog handlers.

  3. Rolling the ATFE into the the FBI is idiotic and will will vastly increase trouble for gun owners.The FBI has far more power and far less accountability than the ATFE.As it is the ATFE cockroaches can be closely monitored and punished for their unconstitutional excesses.The best course would be to drastically cut their enforcement power by eliminating their regulatory discretion (no ability to ban ammunition or imports via “sporting purposes” or other unconstitutional criteria),drastically cut their budget & eliminate the vast majority of their utterly corrupt employees.

  4. What is needed is the cleansing of the corrupt and lawless senior management and lawyers. Not happening under the current administration.

  5. Why yes, yes, I absolutely agree. We should shut down a federal agency. Any one is a good start, but I’ll surely take the ATF. And then, after we’ve downsized them, we should start on the EPA, the DoE, HUD… I’ve got a list of agencies that we’d be just fine without!

  6. BATFE agents need to be de-commissioned and the displaced can try and find other niches in the federal government or in state governments. The FBI does NOT want them as a group. They’re some outstanding ATF agents, most of whom work in very deep cover assignments that FBI or DEA would want, but the run-of-the-mill ATF drones need to find other work because they are unwanted anywhere but their own enclave.

  7. +1 to PawPaw pretty much but with all the regulatory function for all aspects to treasury and enforcement only to the FBI.

    Folding all of ATF into the FBI will likely make things worse, considering the ATFE’s not-so-stellar reputation and public face versus that of the FBI.

  8. Prof- In principal, I agree 1000%! But we know that won’t actually happen… Sigh

    Paw/Gerry- That makes good sense!

    BC- I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that’s a good point!

    WSF- Sad but true!

    Dot/Rev- Yeah! And add NEA… sigh

    LL- Good point, and matches what I’ve heard from other sources.

    gfa- 🙂

    Aaron- Concur!

  9. Oh no worries…Obama will restructure that so they can take more guns off the street.

  10. IMO they need to hire more incompetent agents .
    Given the arbitrary and capricious nature of their tech branch letters/findings the more they look incompetent the better it is for us as a whole . The only thing that has changed in the last 30 or 40 years at ATF is the name and the fact that some of their crap is making its way public via the internet .

  11. From what I’ve heard, as a Foreign Correspondent who’s never actually been in the US of A, there is no possible way that the ATF could be less competent.

    I mean, there must be some basic threshold of intellect there, because all these letters and legal threats manage to avoid getting lost in the mail, and the agents don’t drive their vans off high bridges- or at least, the news never mentions it if they do -but given organisations in general and government agencies in particular, I notice intelligence is a bit like air; the higher you go, the less there seems to be.

  12. When was the last time you saw a government agency go away, any government agency?
    They are so top heavy that I expect a Government Hooters to open in the West Wing…

  13. Very x 10^10 bad idea. The FBI is far larger and far less accountable to the political process. We can apply corrective pressure to BATF through funding and confirmation of directors.

    The FBI is close enough to being an American Gestapo without being given even more power.