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ATF Director Leaves, Fears Budget Cuts Under Trump, GOP Congress

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Congress nearly $50 million from this year’s $1.6 billion budget for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The cuts meant no surge in agents to combat the typical summer crime rise, no training classes for new officers and no keeping up with demands from local law enforcement agencies to operate the bullet-tracing machines that help them solve violent crimes. President-elect Trump has denounced ATF and said he would roll back some of its policies. Trump called ATF director Steve Dettelbach, who was appointed by President Biden, an “anti-gun fanatic” and said his leadership has been “a disaster.” Dettelbach resigned Friday. He fears the Republican-controlled Congress will drastically reduce the budget of the 5,000-person agency and there will be no one in the White House to fight back. “It’s a very small department, there’s not a lot of fat to cut,” Dettelbach tells the Washington Post.


Republicans have long viewed ATF as a political entity, saying it aims to regulate guns beyond what the Second Amendment allows. More than a half dozen Republicans in Congress back abolishing the agency to protect gun owners from “bureaucratic overreach.” During Dettelbach’s tenure, ATF set rules for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, requiring anyone who sells a firearm through mail order or at flea markets, gun shows or online to register for a license and conduct background checks for buyers. ATF crafted rules to curb the sale of ghost guns, which are assembled from pre-manufactured parts, and to regulate stabilizing braces, which make it easier to rapidly fire scores of bullets. Dettelbach spent his final months on the job touring gun-tracing sites to highlight how ATF is critical in curbing gun crimes. Known as Crime Gun Intelligence Centers, the sites use federally funded technology and agents to trace guns and locate criminals alongside FBI agents and local police officers. Most ATF agents support Dettelbach’s ghost gun rule and believed these untraceable weapons were increasingly driving crime in local communities. Dettelbach is only the second Senate-approved director since 2006. Biden withdrew his first pick to serve — David Chipman — after bipartisan pushback over his gun-control advocacy. In his first term, Trump dropped nominee Chuck Canterbury, the former head of the Fraternal Order of Police, because Republicans thought he would restrict gun rights.

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