Firearms Bureau Struggles to Define Its Role

[donnay]

Firearms Bureau Struggles to Define Its Role

BY EVAN PEREZ (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444042704577587230600869526.html)

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives brings fewer than a hundred alcohol and tobacco cases a year. It now plays second fiddle to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on explosives. And its skill at catching firearms violators is in doubt after the flawed probe known as Fast and Furious.

No wonder the agency's boss is looking to reinvent it, and maybe even change its name.

The ATF is a Washington oddity, stitched together in the 1970s from units going back to the age of Prohibition. Gun-rights supporters are wary of it, yet they are also loath to see firearms regulation move to the FBI.

So the ATF survives, and acting director B. Todd Jones has to figure out what to do with it. "We're the entity that everyone loves to hate," said the 55-year-old former Marine.

Hence an idea discussed by top ATF officials: ditching the agency's anachronistic seven-word name and rebranding it the Violent Crime Bureau.


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They should be disbanded along with the rest of the tyrannical alphabet groups--TSA, FDA, USDA, FDA. IRS, etc...

[Weston White]

“Violent Crime Bureau”, now that definitely sounds draconian! I can see it already, "Hello, I am with the VCB and we are here to take over your local police/sheriff investigation, kindly leave our crime scene or otherwise you may stay and fetch us a fresh cup of Starbucks, double mochochino, tall. Now that will be all, thank you."

Personally, I say shut down the BATFE and transfer its core functions, while also abandoning all of the powers it had wrongfully inherited through mission creep to the FBI (they have a terrorist division, therefore, there is no reason why they cannot also simply have a ATFE division as well, which in all honestly they probably already do). But to be blunt the entire BATFE should have been completely defunded and left to wither away following the Waco tragedy, not praised and promoted. Also, while on the subject the entire DHS needs to be greatly toned down itself.

[Pericles]

At least that name would be truth in advertising what they really do.

[oyarde]

At least that name would be truth in advertising what they really do. Yep.