> The ATF was born out of prohibition.
No it wasn’t. Nixon created the ATF in 1972.
The treasury department handled that stuff before then.
The actual agency, yes. But there was a progression that lead to the agency. It had several different names and missions but they evolved into the ATF and DEA. The bottom line is the people who were enforcing prohibition had to find something else to enforce.
Correct. My father was a Treasury Dep. Lawdog. He started in Salt Lake (where I was born circa 1970). He would tell us kids about the nutjobs hired into the ATF. One story that got him fired up was about those guys hunting elk and taking irresponsible shots (500 meters or more), he had no respect for any of them. He called them a malignancy on the Dept. He left the gov in 1980 to help average joe citizen.