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On Monday, we asked if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could be reformed, citing companion bills in the Senate and House backed by the National Rifle Association that promise to roll back certain restrictions and moderate penalties for minor violations.
Yesterday, we examined a campaign created by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. Their bottom line: "Boot the BATFE."
No doubt many will consider this an unrealistic goal, and deem the likelihood of generating enough support to make it happen remote without revolutionary changes from the way government exerts control now. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be a goal. Besides, at this point, the NRA-backed bills have only attracted 174 cosponsors in the House and 12 in the Senate. Some might tell us passage of such legislation in this administration is also an impossible dream. And those efforts would still leave us under the thumb of an agency with a history of heavy-handed corruption and incompetence.
So what can we do--right now--that has a reasonable chance of making headway? Fortunately, there is something--and it comes from what many will consider two unlikely sources.
The first is CleanUpATF.org, a group of ATF employees who formed:
a non-profit organization dedicated to returning integrity, accountability and decency to the management of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE or "ATF").
Why?
In recent years, ATF management has become widely and officially known for corruption, self-service, and at times, overt incompetence...In the last two years alone, there have been nearly 400 employee complaints. In an organization with only about 5,000 employees...Recently publicized cases have involved malicious and carefully orchestrated management campaigns to smear, discredit, and professionally destroy agents who have repeatedly risked their lives for ATF and the public, solely in reprisal for the filing of legitimate complaints...The Bureau's leadership has also miserably failed or even deliberately refused to meet its responsibility to protect highly decorated undercover agents from documented threats...
Their conclusion?
All of these factors substantially degrade BATFE's ability to accomplish its authorized missions, and constitute an inexcusable misuse of taxpayer resources.
So what am I suggesting? Sympathy for government workers who complain that because of this, "they have little time to actually enforce the nation's firearms and other laws"?
Not at all. And while there is a suggestion to exploit this to our advantage, it's not mine. It's Mike Vanderboegh's.
I'll tell you about it tomorrow.
Filed by David Codrea/Gun Rights Examiner: 09 September 2009
Comments
I'll be watching this.
Well, we'll see what Mike has to say, but I'm still having trouble getting any sort of warm fuzzy about re-legitimizing an agency whose very existence is in total defiance of what is supposed to be our highest law. See, it's not the incompetence--that, we can certainly live with. It's the jackbooted thuggery implicit in the agency's core mission that gets the goats of free people.
If some decent people want to restore personal integrity to their work environment, great. But even if Horiuchi, Cavanaugh, et al are actually brought to answer for their crimes--even if the harassment, threats, inexplicable secrecy, entrapment, forfeiture, and other ad nauseam abuses DO get reined in--the problem of the mission remains: ATF's entire purpose is the rationing of liberty to a supposedly free people. "Kinder, gentler" just doesn't cut it.
"accomplish its authorized missions"? I can back that since there is no authorization for the ATF to even exist, much less "mission" anyone. BATFEces must disband immediately.
i've stated it elsewhere and i'll state it here: of course the ATF can be reformed.
they can *sell* alcohol, tobacco and firearms.
Kevin--don't make assumptions...I think you'll like Mike's idea...:)
The ATF is only one cog of the big corrupt machine. If you could fix it, it would just get corrupted again or replaced by another lettered division that is corrupted. You have to start at the top. As we all know, Sh?t flows down.
Fix the top and all other will follow.
The government is at war with the people. In a war, you want to stop your enemy from firing upon you and from communicating. The ATF is the administrative arm of this strategy. For the enemies of liberty, the more corrupt and criminal the batfu is, the BETTER. They ain't goin nowhere, unless lead gets thrown at them. I don't want that, I'm not going to do that, the feds will have it no other way.
Looking forward to the breaking news, knowledge is the cornerstone of Democracy.
Isn't it strange that all our founders grew tobacco,made alcohol and went to war to protect firearms,and our government is always trying to destroy our access to these very tools of freedom?
The ATF, BATF, ATFE or whatever, is another executive agency which will bend to the wind of whatever poltical climate is prevaling. As such it is very dangerous to the security, liberties, freedoms & God Given Rights as enumerated. ANY of these agencies represents MAN'S LAW PREVAILING OVER NATURAL LAW ( GOD) & is directly opposite of what our founders, in their infinite wisdom, sacrificed life, limb & property in order to create. (SPECIFICALLY OUR 2A) Insofar as the A-lcohol & T-obaco segments of their "mission"; ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! The whole agency was designed for tax revenue enforcement. A far better use of our tax dollars & the agency, if our Republic is to be preserved, would be to neuter their poltically inferred arrest & enforcement powers AND LIMIT them to investigation work as assistants to various State agencies & perhaps the FBI. Kinda like USCSI.
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