Tag: steven dettelbach

Amid all the stories of transgender controversies, gun control debates that will lead to nothing, and general social media dumbfuckery, it’s been hard to find fresh or even fresh-adjacent topics to discuss. Believe me, I can talk about the aforementioned topics all day, but I don’t want to bore you. That’s what my joke writer is for.

But hope springs eternal if you just look around long enough, and buddy did I ever strike pay dirt! During a recent House hearing, the current Director of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Steven Dettelbach had a bit of trouble answering a firearms question: what is an assault weapon. Of course, he had trouble because he’s not a biologist…

But this got me thinking about the ATF as a government entity. Do we need it? What does it do? Can it be renamed the Bureau of a Good Time on a Holiday Weekend? These and other questions are going to be answered…somewhere else, but I’ll give it a shot.

Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms

What the Left thinks it means – a government agency designed to regulate the items in the agency’s name

What it really means – a really bad idea made worse through incompetence

The ATF’s website describes its mission as:

ATF’s responsibilities include the investigation and prevention of federal offenses involving the unlawful use, manufacture, and possession of firearms and explosives; acts of arson and bombings; and illegal trafficking of alcohol and tobacco products. The ATF also regulates, via licensing, the sale, possession, and transportation of firearms, ammunition, and explosives in interstate commerce.

Judging from the number of people who shoot off fireworks in my neighborhood around the 4th of July, it’s clear the ATF is doing a bang-up job, if you’ll pardon the pun. And if you don’t, fuck you!

Anyway, the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of the ATF’s job is three-fold: investigate offenses, prevent potential offenses, and regulate a bunch of shit involving, well, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. As of the most recent data I could find (Fiscal Year 2020 for the people playing along at home), the ATF had over 5000 employees across multiple areas, with an annual budget of $1.4 billion. That’s a shit-ton of money spent per employee! So, how effective are they?

That depends on who you ask. Many on the Left see room for improvement, especially in the area of gun violence prevention. Others aren’t so optimistic, citing ineffectiveness and a lack of respect as reasons they aren’t highly regarded and respected in their roles.

Maybe it’s me, but I think the real reason they’re not heralded for their work is how the agency fucked up in Waco, Texas, with the Branch Davidians. For those of you who don’t remember (and, for that, I envy you), the Branch Davidians were a Christian cult whose leader, David Koresh, was accused of some serious shit ranging from stockpiling illegal weapons to child abuse to statutory rape. And 51 days later, all chaos broke loose. Although the details are still sketchier than a mixed drink handed to a hot girl in a sleazy nightclub owned by Hunter Biden, the general consensus was the ATF and the FBI shared blame for things going pear-shaped.

Granted, we shouldn’t base our opinions of a government agency on one fuck-up, even if it’s the mother of all fuck-ups. That’s why I have more examples! And, as you might expect, anti-gun groups keep hammering the ATF to do its job.

Which, according to these groups, is to do what they say.

Which means a) the ATF shouldn’t listen to groups who need people to die to remain politically relevant, b) the ATF must really be fucked up, and c) the ATF needs to be abolished, like, yesterday.

Let’s be frank (especially if your name is Frank), the ATF can’t regulate its way out of a plain brown bag holding a bottle of cheap hooch, let alone the breadth of issues the agency is supposed to address. And for $1.4 billion, we should expect a level of competency even an amoeba could meet.

And let the ATF limbos under it without even having to bend over.

Of course, the Left doesn’t see this as a problem so long as the ATF continues to push for more gun regulations. And with the Biden Administration pushing for more as part of a “gun safety” push, it’s a safe guess the Left doesn’t want the ATF going anywhere for a while.

In the meantime, though, it’s hard to justify why we even have an ATF if they don’t know what they’re doing. I’m sure there are some good folks there (law of averages and such), but that doesn’t make them immune to the legitimate criticism of how the ATF sucks at its job.

What’s more, they are part of two rampant problems the Left doesn’t want to address: redundancy, and redundancy. Not to mention redundancy. So much of what the ATF does is also being done by other federal agencies or can be folded into existing roles without a loss of effectiveness. After all, when you’re effectiveness is a wash, you can’t really lose effectiveness by transferring duties to another team.

Granted, I am biased here because I’m definitely on the “smaller government is better government” bandwagon, so obviously I want to get rid of as much government as possible without damaging the country. Having said that, I think the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms has overstayed its welcome and should be heading to the Great Bureaucratic Shitstorm in the Sky. For the money we spend, we should be getting results other than “well, we fucked up again.”

In their defense, though, “Well, we fucked up again” is the unofficial slogan of the Puddin’ Head Joe Administration.