Posted on 09/17/2014 1:34:37 PM PDT by Objective Scrutator
A top Republican House member on Wednesday proposed eliminating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, writing a bill that would freeze all hiring at the troubled agency and require the Justice Department to come up with a plan for transferring its duties to other agencies.
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who wrote the bill, called it both a chance to streamline government and to clean up an agency that’s been criticized from the right and the left for botched gun-running operations.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Actions speak louder than words.I’m all for it.
I just wonder if the rest of the Republican politico’s agree.
Well my name’s John Lee Pettimore
Same as my Daddy and his Daddy before
You hardly ever saw grandaddy down here
He only come to town about twice a year
He’d buy a hundred pounds of yeast and some copper line.
Everybody knew that he made moonshine
Now the revenue man wanted grandad bad
He headed up the holler with everything he had
‘fore my time but I’ve been told
He never come back from Copperhead Road.
Steve Earl-”Copperhead Road”
How they dealt with BATFE back in the day.
I like the idea of dissolving ATF, particularly if they repeal a few major federal gun laws at the same time. There should be no restrictions at all on silencers, and there should be no tax stamp and no yearlong delay for fully automatic firearms or short-barreled rifles/shotguns.
gee....
last time this happened was just before the oklahoma city bombing...
we had a dem president back then too...
hmmmmmmmmm....
The ATF started out as the Treasury Department's Prohibition Unit (later renamed to the Bureau of Prohibition), formed to enforce the National Prohibition Act of 1919 (the Volstead Act).
It was later renamed to become the Alcohol Beverage Unit, then again to the Alcohol Tax Unit.
Throughout its history it has been bounced around like a red headed stepchild from the Treasurey Dept. to the IRS, to the FBI, back to Treasury, then to the Department of Justice.
After prohibition ended in 1933 the department was basically out of a job and was effectively disbanded (at least on paper).
But it was saved by congress when they passed the unconstitutional National Firearms Act.
The old Alcohol Tax Unit evolved into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and was charged with enforcement of the new federal firearm laws.
After the muslim attacks on 9/11 the ATF was reorganized and its name was changed to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives - the BATFE.
Repeal the unconstitutional National Firearms Act and most of the reason for the BATFE to exist will go away too.
What the ??? Is that for real? Damn, just looking at that makes me want to down a pint of Jim Beam. That pics gotta be the reason they ended prohibition ha ha. Look at the face on the one sitting down on the right in the front row, WHAT is that? She looks like she ate too many lemons.
I have been there a few times. Probably the worst being this girl from Austria I met in a dark bar, got her number and met her for dinner the next night and spent the whole dinner wondering how I didn’t notice that she had a mustache. “BURP” LOL!
ATF is the trailer park trash branch of feral government law enforcement.
“The ATF was primarily a tax collection agency until the GCA of 1968.”
Then the ATF thugs morphed into a state-sponsored terrorist organization, ala Himmler’s Nazi Eizengruppen. Their mission: To inflict casualties on women, children and babies, while avoiding fights with groups of armed men.
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. is making a huge first step, and he needs to be applauded for it.
To start with, it is incredibly hard to eliminate any government agency, because bureaucrats create poison pills that will create havoc. So transferring its duties to other agencies is a great start in the path to eventually drop most of these duties completely.
Second, you can’t just hand out pink slips, because the government employees unions will fight tooth and nail. When Reagan took on PATCO, while it was not a large union, it still was a heck of a fight to kill it. How he isolated it from the other unions took some real finesse.
This means that a lot of BATF&E personnel will be laterally transferred to other agencies, creating more problems. So if you can early retire and eliminate with attrition, every one who goes that way will be less hassle.
Trying to prosecute those who broke the law after Barry has left office will also be hard. But not impossible. And this may be key to slashing other government agencies.
That is, make them a deal: “Quit or retire now, and you won’t be prosecuted.”
There are a LOT of scoundrels in the bureaucracy that would jump at this opportunity, if they thought they were going to go down hard if they stayed.
The way it has been used recently you really can’t call it the War Department anymore. More like social services with tanks,jets, and ships.
Sensenbrenner introduces Bill to dissolve ATF.
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
Put them in charge of pot growers. That is all.
Thanks for the link, although I hope that the author isn’t using “progressive” as a reference to the Progressive Movement of the early 1900s. As usual, it is impossible to tell the difference between extremism and a parody of extremism without a blatant display of humor.
Liberals love to run to the Fourteenth Amendment to justify expanding state power, but when conservatives issue opinions such as Lochner v. New York (which struck down socialist "maximum work week" laws), they start crying that the court is promoting an economic theory. (I've always found it interesting that one of the greatest legal minds in American history, Robert Bork, has also criticized Lochner (p. 22), as I think that state laws which try to regulate informed consensus between two parties inherently infringe on a right to property and should be overturned by a federal court.)
AT needs to go - along with Homeland Security, Bureau of
Lareau of land management and IRS
Ok, I’m going to take just a little credit here. Sensenbrenner is my Congressman and I have written and called about ending the ATF at least 6-7 times.
It was in Milwaukee that the ATF had the joke of a ‘sting’ location where they lost a for real automatic weapon.
+1. Just kill it.
A few years ago I was at a St. George, UT gun show and the ATF had a table there covered with different forms and manned by two men and a woman.
The guys looked like they felt they were in enemy territory - eyes shifting defensively/furtively and shoulders hunched up.
I told them that I couldn’t see why mail orders of pre-1898 reproductions - single shots and levers - had to go through a dealer. The guys just glared at me but the woman said that the best bet was to get a C&R license. That still didn’t answer my question but at least she seemed decent and wanting to help. The guys reinforced the jack-booted thug epithet.
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