New Legislation to Eliminate the ATF

[thallub]

I'd rather take my chances with the FBI in lieu of the cowboys (and cowgirls) of the BATFE and their list of rather egregious encroachments and oversteps.

You make a good point there. In 1979 i was the NCOIC of an Army EOD unit. A rogue BATF SAC insisted i lie to a federal judge.

The BATF raided the home of a prominent doctor. The raid was based on information given by a convicted felon. The felon claimed the Dr. owned an unregistered M2 carbine; that proved to be a lie. The BATFE confiscated over 200 guns and hundreds of thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition.

To make a long story short, a federal judge ordered the BATFE to return the doctors ammo and guns. The BATF could not produce the ammunition. The SAC claimed all that ammo was turned into my unit for disposal: That was a bald faced lie. After a couple phone conversations where i steadfastly refused to lie to a federal judge, the SAC showed up on my units door step at 05:30 AM with an Army CID agent who i knew. Right away the SAC broke bad and demanded the CID agent read me my rights. The agent responded with "if you want to read him his rights then do it yourself".

i was interviewed by the BATF internal investigations guy who told me the SAC could not produce any of the ammunition and some of the guns belonging to the doctor. i retired from the US Army soon after this incident. Earlier this year i was informed that the SAC and another person from that BATF office were found in contempt of a federal judge and jailed.

[Grizz12]

Not in my lifetime!

I think back to how different things were in this Country just 7 years ago. At that time I would have never guessed, in my worst nightmares, that this Country and its leadership would have done the things they have done. And its more frightening to think those idiots were voted into office, which shows how ignorant the voting public actually is

[Webleymkv]

I don't dispute that, on the whole, the FBI does appear more professional than the ATF (I would even go so far as to say that the ATF seems to act as the personal brown shirts of whatever administration happens to be in place at the time). The questions, however, that come to mind are why is this the case and what would prevent the FBI, DEA, or whatever other federal agency the ATF might be absorbed into from becoming just as bad or worse if the ATF were dissolved?

The real problem, as I see it, is that through a series of poorly written and thought-out laws, we have given way too much discretionary power to unelected government bureaucrats who can get lost in the alphabet soup of federal agencies. I think that the ATF is probably one of the agencies most prone to abuse its power because the set of laws it's tasked with enforcing are some of the most vague, poorly written, and granting of discretionary power. I fear that, unless we do some house cleaning with the way the laws are written first, dissolving the ATF would only result in trading one abuser of power for another.

[ATN082268]

Originally Posted by Webleymkv

The real problem, as I see it, is that through a series of poorly written and thought-out laws, we have given way too much discretionary power to unelected government bureaucrats

The politicians have given away too much discretionary power so it can help them avoid making the tough decisions and be unaccountable for those decisions. If the politicians want a particular law that is generally unpopular, they can frequently have some bureaucracy enact it instead. It is the kind of system which caters to those with poor leadership, lacking honor and brimming with cowardice.