The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives should be dissolved and have its mission, agents and investigators merged into the FBI, the Center for American Progress concluded in a new report following a two-year investigation of the agency.
“Every day, thousands of dedicated agents and civilians working at ATF fight to keep guns out of the hands of criminals — many risk their lives,” said Arkadi Gerney, CAP senior vice president. “But too often, the leadership, management, and resources lag behind the dedication of the agents.”
After interviewing more dozens of current and former ATF agents and other members of law enforcement, CAP concluded that the ATF suffers from serious management, funding and coordination problems.
The center notes:
Over the past 20 years, the agency has developed a culture of limited oversight and lack of accountability that has resulted in a structure of largely autonomous local field divisions that have too little connection to the executive leadership at the agency’s headquarters or to each other. This decentralized structure at times has left room for innovation by the agency’s many talented special agents and, in many offices, has resulted in strong investigative work. But too often, successful strategies in one field division are not transferred to other divisions — and worse, this autonomy has led to a culture of complacency in some field divisions, which has resulted in significant misjudgments and mistakes.
The negative effects of lackluster oversight within the ATF made national headlines in 2013 when The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a series of reports on the agency’s use of “rogue tactics” throughout the nation.
And in 2010, the ATF’s notorious Fast and Furious program shot to the center of public debate after news broke that Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed with a firearm the agency had allowed to “walk” into the hands of Mexican cartel members.
Besides problems within the ATF, CAP argues that the agency should be dissolved simply because it is failing in its mission to keep guns out of the hands of criminals in the country.
Via CAP:
While there have been remarkable reductions in violent crime across the country — driven in part by federal law enforcement’s partnerships with local police — illegal gun access continues to contribute to murder rates in the United States that far outpace those in comparable countries. The problem of gun crime in the United States and the daily toll of gun deaths on our communities warrant something new — a large-scale rethinking of how the federal government should address gun violence and illegal firearms trafficking and what ATF’s role should be in that effort.
According to CAP, merging the ATF with the FBI would help decrease gun crimes while significantly reducing government waste.
From the report:
First, combining the assets of these two agencies would reduce overlap and waste and would provide some cost savings at a time when all government agencies are struggling to maintain budgets. And merging the expertise of these two agencies would result in more effective and successful enforcement of federal firearms and explosives laws and a better approach to combat violent crime.
Merging the ATF with the FBI would be a lengthy process which CAP estimates could take as many as seven years. But according to the center, the end result would be an annual cost savings of $58.7 million.
This isn’t the first time the idea of dissolving or radically restructuring the ATF has been floated. In March, in apparent response to the ATF’s attempt to regulate popular types of rifle ammunition off the civilian market, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) introduced legislation to disband the agency.
Sensenbrenner has long called for the ATF’s abolition, citing the agency’s well-publicized scandals as proof that the agency does more harm to the nation than good.
“[The ATF’s] ‘Framework’ is an affront to the Second Amendment and yet another reason why Congress should pass the ATF Elimination Act,” the lawmaker said of his legislation.
Sensenbrenner’s ATF Elimination Act would have handed the ATF’s firearms, explosives and arson responsibilities to the FBI and alcohol and tobacco law enforcement to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
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