ATF is too wounded to enforce gun-control laws

[flamin lib]

http://www.kcchronicle.com/2015/05/26/another-view-atf-is-too-wounded-to-enforce-gun-control-laws/ayezsz0/?page=1

Many members of Congress seem to view the U.S.’s most deadly criminals – those who carry guns – as a protected class. For decades, they’ve tried everything imaginable to cripple the agency charged with enforcing federal laws against illegal gun buying, trafficking and possession.
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A new report by the Center for American Progress recommends that the ATF be merged into the FBI. It’s worth considering. It would be hard to do worse than the status quo.
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Merging into the FBI might push the ATF out of the congressional crosshairs. The FBI, for all its troubles, is generally well-regarded by both parties, and its reputation could give the enforcement of gun laws greater credibility.
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There’s the chance that shielding gun-law enforcement from congressional attacks could lead it to be neglected by the FBI, the Department of Justice and the White House. But the opposite is also true: An administration committed to combating gun crimes would have some political cover to do so.

The way the ATF has been treated by the GOP is classic conservatism; hobble, handicap and under-fund until an agency can't function and then say, "See, gobmint don't work!"

When forced to pass laws they don't like they sabotage them by making them un-enforceable. I hear the gunners constantly say that the FBI doesn't prosecute those who fail background checks but the records of that crime must, by law, be destroyed in 24 hours.

They say background checks don't work but refuse to demand background checks on the 40% of gun sales that are not done through licensed gun dealers.

They say we don't need state laws because there are federal laws but refuse to admit that the agencies that enforce federal laws are underfunded, under manned and consistently without leadership because the Senate won't approve department heads.

[jimmy the one]

1. I'm for it, tho, transfer to fbi

... imagine, if transferred to fbi, increases the likelihood of the nra being investigated by that federal bureau of it.
I bet nra will remain silent until the idea actually melds better.

mother jones mag, jan 2013: On the campaign trail, he'd {Reagan} bashed the ATF and vowed to dissolve it. Once in Washington, Reagan, with the NRA's backing, proposed folding the ATF into the Secret Service.
But then the NRA had had a change of heart. The organization's strategists came to worry that if gun law enforcement was handed to the Secret Service, one of the few federal agencies with a reputation for competence, gun owners might actually have something to fear. And, they feared, that if the agency did become part of the Secret Service, they'd lose an easy target.
The NRA realized, "'Oh my God, we're gonna lose the ATF!'" recalls William Vizzard, who worked for bureau at the time. "It would have been like removing the Soviets during the Cold War, for the Defense Department—there's nobody to point to."

Working in conjunction with the liquor lobby, the NRA coaxed a friendly lawmaker, Sen. James Abdnor (R-S.D.), into scuttling the merger by inserting language in a budget bill. As Vizzard puts it, "If it weren't for the NRA and the liquor industry, there would be no ATF today, because the merger with the Secret Service would have just gone ahead."
... Once the NRA had saved the ATF, it focused on how to neuter it. Four years after bargaining for the preservation of the ATF, the NRA helped Congress formally handcuff the agency, in the form of the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act. The law, which included a handful of token regulations, made it all but impossible for the govt to prosecute corrupt gun dealers. It prohibited the bureau from compiling a national database of retail firearm sales, reduced the penalty for dealers who falsified sales records from a felony to a misdemeanor, and raised the threshold for prosecution for unlicensed dealing.
.. most glaringly, the ATF was explicitly prohibited from conducting more than one inspection of a single dealer in a given year, meaning that once an agent had visited a shop, that dealer was free to flout the law. Those restrictions haven't changed over the last two decades. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/atf-obama-gun-reform-control-alcohol-tobacco-firearms

Over the last three decades, gun activists and lawmakers have purposefully hindered the ATF and carefully molded the agency that enforces gun laws to serve their own interests, stunting the ATF's budget, handicapping its regulatory authority, and keeping it effectively leaderless. .. The problems are obvious. The agency that Obama said "works most closely with state and local law enforcement to keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals" has the same of number of agents as the Phoenix Police Dept. Its budget has barely budged in decades. It has fewer investigators than it did in 1973. The NRA blocked Obama's earlier appointee, Andrew Traver, in part because Traver had once attended a meeting of police chiefs that focused on gun control.