Staff Reports
Steven Dettelbach, the big boss at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), spilled the beans on the tough stuff his crew deals with in trying to track down guns used in crimes because there’s no fancy federal gun list. Yep, during a chat on “Face the Nation” last Sunday, Dettelbach made it clear that his team has to do a whole lot of digging through a bunch of records to find out where those bad guns came from.
ATF Director Steven Dettelbach Details Procedures Agency Takes In Absence Of Federal Gun Owner Registry https://t.co/I10JzwrN0d via @dailycaller
— chuck harrison (@0SweetSolace0) March 4, 2024
You see, the ATF can’t just click a few buttons and bam, all the gun owners pop up on the screen. Nope, Congress said no way to that! So now, the agency has to roll up their sleeves and manually sift through millions of papers every single month. It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack, folks!
Dettelbach pointed out that his squad has to do some good old-fashioned detective work because the law makes it tough for them to easily figure out who owns what gun. They can’t just type in a name and get all the answers. Nope, they have to hit the streets, knock on doors, and hunt down the folks who bought those firearms.
It’s a real pain in the neck for the ATF, but they are the only ones at the federal level trying to crack down on violent crimes. And get this, with just 5,000 folks on the team, they’re stretched thin like butter over too much bread! They’ve gotta juggle a lot with only a few hands.
Those House Republicans had some beef with the ATF before, thinking they were stepping on people’s Second Amendment rights. They wanted to either chop the ATF down or get rid of it altogether because they thought it was overstepping its boundaries. Better safe than sorry, right?
