… which is unfortunately a mixed blessing. Hopeful? Yes, if the new power faction has the slightest real intention of draining the swamp. But it also puts us in a dangerous moment. Very important post from Kit Perez, whose Patrick Henry Society has returned to life.
I want one of those patches.
(Via Western Rifle Shooters)
While I’m not an American I think getting rid of the ATF would be a good thing for you guys. The only thing that concerns me would be the election of 2020. If the Democrats won I suspect they would resurrect the ATF or, most likely, fill the void with something worse.
From a personal standpoint I wonder how doing mail order across the border for parts would be effected without the ATF? Would this mean the end of enforcement for ITAR? Hummm…
If you read that carefully, there is no intention to eliminate or even reduce the insanity of the BATFE. They’d simply shuffle the evil deck of cards. All of the “laws” would remain in place, but enforced by the FBI and other agencies. While the elimination of this worthless, redundant outfit would be good, it won’t solve the problems at all. NONE of the restrictions, regulations or nonsense would go away.
The other concern is that, so far, the BATFE has been incredibly inefficient. Does anyone actually want someone competent to enforce this garbage? The FBI is much more efficient than the BATF clowns ever dreamed of being – and they are much better funded. Be careful what you wish for…
Kit makes a good point about the extremes to which the ATF was willing to go 20+ years ago to justify its existence. That stunt should have *guaranteed* its dissolution, but instead it just kept on keeping on. Hope they don’t show up in my yard.
I’m torn on the issue. It’s possible she’s right, and switching ATF “duties” to FBI would turn into a nightmare for gun retailers and owners. Personally I doubt it – FBI has its own resource problems, plenty of agents would not welcome the job, FBI agents in general despise ATF agents in general: The “F-Troop” insult first came from the FBI – but I’ve been wrong before.
But for personal reasons dating back to the early seventies, I just hate the ATF. I want it destroyed, I want the headquarters building torn down and the materials used for the building of public privies. I want the ground where it stood plowed under and sowed with salt, and then I want to piss on it. Even if the FBI started efficiently doing what the ATF has always done badly – which I agree would be a bad thing – at least some ATF brass would go under the bus and serve as a warning for others. And that would be a good thing.
I guess the one reason for optimism is we don’t have Janet Reno or another Clinton. I’d like to believe that, anyway.
Very good points raised by Kit as always. When it comes to government agencies it is my opinion also that they will do whatever they can to stay in business and there’s a lot of letter’s still not being used in the alphabet if you just want to play musical chairs with some government employees and that is exactly the point ML is making.
IMHO it is all about the head of the snake, you can cut the tail off but that snake can still live methinks, so who is Jeff Sessions and what does he stand for? The last I heard he supported the confiscation of private property without due process in the name of the War on Drugs (& in maybe other government wars too) and methinks he just loves the Patriot Act (he voted yes on the PATRIOT Act & wiretaps, etc) which says to me the constitution ain’t what his first priority has been or will be.
It ain’t about what they say but what they do!
FYI – Straight from the horse’s mouth…
http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398088
J. Edgar Hoover would be happy…
Well:
A. I’d love to see the ATF (or any other federal agency) shut down just to demonstrate that it is, in fact, possible to actually shut a federal agency down. What a huge precedent to have available.
2. If the bill passes, then the ATF has six months to come up with a plan for how it’ll dissolve.
Um,
“fox”
“chicken house”
I just can’t see how that would work.
I like Joel’s plan better. I’ll bring my own salt.
Regarding ATF- Why would the Trump Regime replace them? Or even cut their funding? Trump’s made it clear that one of his few unchanging positions is Copsucker In Chief. He worships Power: his own, that of other “peer” strongmen, and that of his followers and myrmidons. His entire campaign in regards to Law Enforcement has been one long paen to Blue Privilege and the lethal power of the State; in Trumpworld, an appropriate uniform confers not only legal and moral Infallibility, but Impeccability as well.
Sure, ATF might find their diabolical energies “redirected” to some other, more convenient, browner and less Christian targets for awhile. But given the man’s paranoia and absolute impenetrability as regards such things as Facts I expect those energies to be redoubled, the budgets to be increased, the culture and equipment ever more mitarised. And given that manchild’s visible petulence and infamously short attention span, to say nothing of complete disregard for limiting factors or strictures of any kind, do we really doubt that he’d be just as enthusiastic as was Clinton in the political use of such apparati? He’s created a Cult Of Personality which includes Law Enforcement as both objects of co-worship and as the most fervent ranks of its Priesthood- no Feds are going anywhere except on paid vacation when they kill people.
As for “draining the swamp…” Trust a Louisiana boy. That bayou just got a little shallow, enough to get rid of a few water-moccasins and catfish so’s they can be replaced with bull sharks an’ alligators. Don’t worry- it’ll fill back up, just as soon as the rain starts to fall.
BATFE or no BATFE, as long as NFA ’34 and GCA ’68 exist there will be a mission to be carried out by someone. There’s little question that some changes to NFA are long overdue, and that some provisions of GCA are enforced rabidly and those provisions need to be eliminated (eg., a misspelling or incorrect abbreviation on a 4473 constitutes a felony, and a simple typographic error can cost an FFL his or her license).
There’s also little question that BATFE righteously earned the sobriquet F Troop; at the moment the F Troopers are assembled in one place where we can watch them; disperse them to pollute myriad fed dot gov agencies and that job gets harder.
I’ll agree that not only does the swamp need to be drained, but also paved over when it’s dry, and signs erected to point out “this site formerly occupied by agency name here until the American people decided they had endured enough of its crap.” There’s enough potential business in D.C. to keep Jack Loizeaux’s grandchildren busy for years.
Eliminating federal agencies is a very worthwhile mission, but the larger task is eliminating the need for them in the first place; read the Constitution and search it for the words “housing” and “mortgage, ” then explain to me why we have a federal agency named “Housing and Urban Development” and FreddieMac, FannieMae, SallieMae, FHA and VA mortgages and Dept. of Agriculture Farm Bureau loans, all buying, selling, issuing or trading in mortgages.
You want low hanging fruit to start with, there it is, along with Depts. of Education, Energy, Labor and a host of others. Develop the shutdown and scorched earth techniques with them, then move to the so-called LE functions.And, make no mistake, it must be scorched earth to prevent resurrection of those functions under different names.
Joel, above, recommends salting the earth where these agencies once stood. He’s wrong, salt eventually dissipates; we’ll need something with a half-life measured in millenia. And, do not assume “draining the swamp” will not be the struggle of our lifetimes to accomplish; you have no idea how vicious and ruthless a cornered animal facing its demise can be.
We can hope something happens, but in a bureaucracy there is a natural tendency for expansion, as so eloquently described by C. Northcote Parkinson http://www.economist.com/node/14116121 By comparison to a business, where profits and losses clearly show success or failure, the value of a given bureaucratic activity is quite nebulous. A businessman such as Trump will see clearly the need for eliminating useless endeavors as quickly as possible. Whether he sees the current policies as we do is something we can only hope (doesn’t hope have a poor track record so far?). Pretty much that’s all I know to do right now.
And as None points out, sending bad apples to another place only spreads the pollution. I’ve mentioned before Liddy’s keen observation that pouring dirty water into clean water (as if any of it’s clean, of course) yields dirty water.
Trump’s sons are hunters and apparently have turned his head around from his previous generally-negative views on firearms. So, a plus.
There is a good chance that the Hearing Protection bill will pass, making suppressors be over-the-counter items.
The past problems with BATF and then BATFE has been the appointment of (bleeps) who are basically anti-gun. You know what flows downhill. The unending hope is that an appointed boss is not against rational enforcement in a hostile manner.
Shutting down BATFEWTFBBQ and replacing it with the FBI, DEA, etc.is roughly analogous to shutting down the Einsatzgruppen and transferring their function to Division Dirlewanger.
Once I was on my way to a business meeting in Houston and while stopping at a stop light I noticed at this light there was a liquor store on one corner, a gun store on another with a cigar stop right next door.
After the meeting I when back the way I had come so when I got to that same corner I stopped, went into that gun store and ended up buying a new optic, then went over to that liquor store afterwards and bought a pint of Jack, then headed to the cigar shop, bought a good stogie, sat down in a nice cushioned leather chair, shared that jack with some fellow smokers whereas we then solved all the problems of the world as we saw it.
If one day in the future that afternoon would have come to be known as to what the ATF was & only is then maybe there might again be a hope for the survival of this republic IMHO.