#2A – The Next ATF Director Needs to Be a Constitutionalist, Not a Career Cop
For Good Reason, ATF is the Most Hated Agency in the US Government After the IRS
Soon after the Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as Attorney General of the United States, reports surfaced of internal discussions that the next Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) should be a “nonideological” and “seasoned” “law enforcement officer.”1 That would be a mistake.
If the ATF’s abuses of the past several decades have taught us anything, it is that now is not the time for a business-as-usual, “law and order” candidate to head the federal government’s anti-gun bureaucracy. To the contrary, President Trump’s historic reelection mandate calls for a different approach to law enforcement and federal bloat: an ardent constitutionalist who sees the federal government as too big and federal regulations as too many.
That is why Gun Owners of America applauded the President’s choice of Kash Patel to head the FBI, and Elon Musk to head the much-needed Department of Government Efficiency. Indeed, if President Trump’s eclectic second-term personnel picks have a unifying theme, it is that they are not career bureaucrats. The same principle should apply to the agency tasked with enforcing the nation’s far-too-many gun regulations.
Speaking to GOA members during his 2024 reelection campaign, President Trump promised that he would “always defend” the Second Amendment.2 Right now, that means appointing a constitutionalist who will reduce the size of an ATF run amok, not a career “law and order” official who will continue to victimize American gun…