We’re still waiting to learn who Donald Trump will tap as the next director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and what the incoming president plans to do with the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention set up by Joe Biden in 2023, but Second Amendment advocates have plenty of ideas for Trump to consider.
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Writing in the Washington Times, Ryan Petty and GOA’s Aidan Johnston are urging Trump to get rid of the WHOGVP and replace it with a White House Office of Violent Crime Prevention that would “inform Mr. Trump of the pro-crime, pro-illegal immigration and anti-gun policies and bureaucrats, programs and offices that will try to stymie his agenda.”
Women for Gun Rights’ Dianna Liedorff Muller has offered up a similar idea, though she’d like to see the new office focus on both firearms education and violence prevention.
While simply shuttering the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention has its appeal, especially for those of us who want to dramatically shrink the federal government’s footprint, I think it would be shortsighted to scrap the office without replacing it with something along the lines of what Petty, Liedorff Muller, and others have suggested. If nothing else, the White House is a bully pulpit, as the gun control lobby well knows, and having an office dedicated to both promoting safe and responsible gun ownership and preventing violent crime would help 2A advocates in shaping the media narrative around gun ownership and our Second Amendment rights.
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Instead of doling out tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to promote things like red flag laws, imagine if the White House Office of Firearms Education and Violence Prevention instead provided grants to groups and gun shops offering voluntary off-site storage options for those in need, help build new publicly accessible ranges or firearms education courses in those parts of the country where gun ownership is culturally and politically taboo. The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention has been working extensively with both federal agencies and state and local governments to implement new gun controls, but a White House Office of Firearms Education and Violence Prevention could instead help with right-to-carry reciprocity, scrapping “gun-free zones”, and other policies that would bolster and strengthen our Second Amendment rights.
There’s also a lot of discussion and debate about the future of the ATF in Trump’s second term. It’s highly unlikely that the agency will simply be abolished, though it could be moved from the Department of Justice to Treasury.
Peter Forcelli, a retired deputy assistant director who helped blow the whistle on Operation Fast & Furious, says it’s “high time to refocus ATF on its core mission and enhance public safety by returning to proven strategies to target violent offenders and criminal organizations.”
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First, any reform at ATF should focus efforts on pursuing violent offenders, particularly those with a history of armed criminal activity. Agency resources must be devoted first to the most dangerous criminals who create a real danger to public safety. It’s time to stop wasting resources on technicalities and minor infractions and, instead, focus on dismantling the gangs and organized crime networks that wreak havoc and violence on our neighborhoods. To that end, ATF needs to forge closer ties with firearms dealers. These businesses are not enemies; they’re indispensable partners.
Dealers are often the first line of defense to help identify suspicious purchases and flag possible trafficking organizations. A partnership approach with the firearms industry is a vital component in keeping guns away from the wrong people, and it’s time for them to take that approach more seriously.
Streamlining the ATF’s administrative processes is another feature of reform. The agency has a history of burying licensees in paper and doling out extraordinarily harsh penalties for inconsequential clerical errors. That must change. By streamlining regulations on responsible businesses, ATF will be free to target its resources where they matter — criminal investigations.
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The Biden administration (and Biden himself) view the firearms industry as “the enemy“; not gun traffickers, straw buyers, or violent criminals, but the tens of thousands of men and women who make and sell those arms we have an inherent right to keep and bear. Biden has weaponized the ATF against the industry and its customers, and Forcelli is spot on when he says the agency needs to refocus on going after violent offenders and criminal networks.
We’ll be talking more about some of these proposals on Cam & Co next week with folks like Dianna Liedorff Muller and Forcelli, and hopefully by then we’ll have some word from Trump about his replacement of ATF Director Steve Dettelbach or his plans for the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
