If you are a legal gun owner and try to do everything according to the rules, the ATF is a fucking nightmare. They constantly change definitions to make things illegal that used to be legal, so you can follow all of their rules and then somehow, despite no laws being changed at all, poof! You’re potentially a felon. You can even get explicit documentation from the ATF that says something is legal and still end up breaking the law by possessing something illegal just because the ATF changed their mind later.
If they were refocused so that they functioned more like the OP seems to want them to function (or thinks that they do function?) I wouldn’t have a problem with them, but the way that they are doing things right now, I agree that they should be massively defunded.
I can’t say anything further in this thread, because (and this is the problem with the ATF) a proper discussion of the ATF heavily involves gun control politics.
If there is a better way to enforce the laws we already have that Republicans will support, I’m all ears. Again, I believe that just enforcing already existing laws will not solve the problem…but if will have a positive effect I say go for it.
Money for mental health is only going to help if it’s actually spent on things that work, some of which the establishment actively opposes, like psychedelics.
I am unsure how to parse the distinction between “Give ATF the money it needs to execute it’s legally defined duties” and “gun control”. I don’t understand what the OP means and I don’t want to run afoul of the mods more than I already have.
What functions does the OP think ATF legitimately has that it cannot now execute or execute well enough for lack of funding / manpower.
Or should we drop the whole ATF line of thought within this thread and simply focus on mental health, extremism, and the various violence-encouraging aspects of our society?
But a good example is the recent debacle over pistol braces. The ATF had previously ruled that a pistol brace did not qualify as a short barreled rifle, and a lot of people purchased pistol braces with the understanding that the ATF considered them to be perfectly legal. Then, later, the ATF did a complete 180 and declared pistol braces to be a short barreled rifle. Millions of people who had legally purchased pistol braces were now guilty of owning a short barreled rifle without paying the proper tax for it, which is a felony.
The long and short of it is that the ATF effectively changed the law even though technically there was no change in the law here.
The ATF is constantly doing things like this, which is why if you are trying to be a legal gun owner, the ATF is a complete nightmare. You never know what they are going to change next. You can try your best to do everything legally. You can even ask the ATF how to do things legally. But the can change their mind without any notice, and even if you did exactly what they told you to do, that doesn’t matter because they can arbitrarily change their mind later, and now you are suddenly guilty of a felony even though you tried your best to do everything right.
The ATF is playing gun politics, which is off-topic for this thread so I won’t comment on it further. If they would actually focus on their job and would focus on enforcing existing laws, then I would support the OP’s desire to increase their funding. But the way that the ATF is operating now, I not only cannot support the OP’s desire to increase their spending, but I think the ATF should actually be significantly defunded.
If the stated claim by some pro-gun advocates is that the laws we already have are sufficient and do not need to be added to and/or modified, and if the ATF is taken out of the equation does that mean that individual states would take up the slack to enforce those existing laws? Do Republicans that claim to advocate this alternate solution think that the laws we have in place are sufficient, are working just fine, and don’t need a financial boost?
Your focus on the ATF seems misplaced. Most firearms offenses are prosecuted at the state level. We wouldn’t reasonably expect the ATF to engage in the type of street-level enforcement nationwide that is being suggested. And, of course, there are federalism concerns at play.
There have been a number of efforts to increase the prosecution of weapons offenses in federal court (the Trump-era Project Guardian; the much-heralded late 90s Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia) in order to impose harsher (federal) sentences. These have been generally supported by those who would oppose additional gun control measures and have been (at least recently) opposed by “progressives” who claim to be concerned about the racial consequences.
But the idea (right or wrong) that we should focus on enforcement of existing laws is inherently about state and local police resources and prosecutorial focus. I don’t think it’s particularly uncommon for Republicans to support aggressive local policing; aggressive prosecution; and harsh sentencing of gun-related criminals.
Do you think that local policing is currently sufficiently funded, and that it provides adequate aggressive prosecution and the proper amount of harsh punishment?
Well, I would generally support increased funding for police and court systems. But I’m not sure that the lack (or not) of aggressive prosecution or harsh punishment is directly related to the issue of funding. A lot of it has to do with the societal tradeoffs that are inherent in such an such an approach, which aren’t necessarily unreasonable concerns.
What do you think “stronger enforcement of existing gun laws” looks like? Other than money to the ATF.
I think that pro-gun advocates have rock solid control of quite enough municipalities to prove that adequate aggressive prosecution at the local level will decrease mass (and other) shootings.
All they have to do is collate the data and shove it in my progressive anti-gun face.
If the problem is that their local police isn’t well funded, that’s on them, unless they suddenly want to turn socialist and ask for everyone else (i.e. rich liberals) to pay for their needs.
If mental health is where we should be focusing our attention, according to quite a few conservative legislators, they seem to have some interesting ideas on what to do about it according to this article: GOP debate over student mental health puts future funding in doubt - Chalkbeat
Leaving aside those hypocrites that actively oppose privately what they supposedly support publicly, Kevin McCarthy claimed in early 2021 that the mental health problems amongst children was primarily due to school closures and that immediately opening all the schools would solve the problem. However according to the article, " As schools reopened, Republicans became less outspoken about student mental health. Few GOP candidates mentioned the issue during this year’s gubernatorial races, and the House Republicans’ recently unveiled [policy agenda makes no mention of it."
Do you think that defunding the ATF would help with the trace backlog?
So, did the pistol brace change actually affect you at all? Did any ATF changes affect you at all? Or are these just stories you’ve heard of other people saying that it’s a nightmare?
And did this change take up all their time and prevent them from focussing on existing laws? Or is it something that took a negligible amount of effort and had no impact on their ability to enforce existing laws at all?
And of course they had no reason for this, it was just a random square on the dartboard at the ATF head office? Or did they give their reasons for the change?
In other words, would defunding them do anything to get them to stop “playing gun politics”? Or would it only prevent them from enforcing existing laws?
Obviously the latter, and anyone that doesn’t know that has been played by gun politics.
This isn’t the proper thread to have a debate about the ATF and gun control. This is not a gun control thread.
(ETA: Just to be clear, I am speaking as a poster, not a moderator - I do not moderate GD. I am just trying to respect the wishes of the OP to avoid the topic of gun control in this thread.)
I coulda sworn I saw it in the OP, and that you had things to say about it in the post I responded to.
I never said anything about gun control.
I just pointed out that your desire to defund the ATF over some silliness that almost certainly didn’t actually affect you will make local PD’s jobs harder, or even impossible, and won’t stop them from changing regulations to better protect the public playing gun politics.
I guess that’s one vote for not only don’t enforce the laws we have, but decrease enforcement even further.
But, I suppose you did say,
Which is just a way of putting out a position you have no intent to defend. Otherwise, why bring it up in the first place?
Talk about how the ability of the ATF to enforce existing laws, and the possibility that decreasing(or even eliminating) their budget adversely effects those existing laws seems to be on topic to me.
Speaking as a poster, of course. And again, if there are other ways to enforce those laws properly I would love to hear about them.