President Joe Biden’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2024 increases the ATF budget by nearly $2 billion. This staggering jump comes as congressional critics take the agency to task and look to defund initiatives viewed by many as unconstitutional.
There are currently several lawsuits making their way through the judicial system against the ATF, including those against the controversial pistol stabilizer brace rule, the 80 percent frame rule, and the ban on bump stocks.
The budget proposal outlining the massive increase in outlay to the ATF is explained on page 40. It calls for more agency personnel to combat gun trafficking and to oversee more intense regulation of the firearms industry.
The sad truth is that the agency is already burdening the American people with a laundry list of regulations that should have originated from Congress. Federal agencies are not lawmakers, but all too often they are now allowed to set policy as unelected officials.
Recent testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust highlighted this growing concern. Appearing before the group was Ryan Cleckner, a former Special Operations sniper, attorney, author, former NSSF staff member, firearms safety advocate, etc.
Needless to say, his expertise is unquestioned.
Cleckner laid out in plain English for the lawmakers how the Executive Branch is utilizing rulemaking to usurp the constitutional power of the Legislative Branch in a clear overreach of authority.
The topic of the discussion was “Reining in the Administrative State: Reclaiming Congress’ Legislative Power.”
As Cleckner testified, “when you consider legislation or hold hearings on the matter, it is open to the public.” This, of course, is fundamental transparency and key to our democratic institutions surviving over two centuries.
However, he explained that “allowing non-elected and non-representative government bureaucrats in federal agencies to exercise power that should be limited to Congress, and to do so behind closed doors without accountability or transparency, is destructive to America, its citizens, and to Congress.”
Nowhere is this egregious practice more readily apparent in 2023 than in Second Amendment issues.
Cleckner noted that the Department of Justice (DOJ) through the ATF pushed through a change making the attachment of a pistol brace to an AR pistol a criminal offense. This is only avoided if the owner registers the modified firearm under the National Firearms Act as a highly regulated short-barreled rifle.
Even the soon-to-be expanded ATF until recently considered these braces legal. However, the rule change reworks congressional law and criminalizes possession of constitutionally protected firearms that until now were approved.
In other words, as Cleckner correctly observed, a powerful federal agency currently can decide who is a felon with “the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen.”
He added succinctly, “This is not an appropriate enforcement of the law — it is tyranny.”
The ATF, which the White House clearly wants to increase significantly in both size and scope, does not have the authority to make new gun control laws. It is part of the Executive Branch, which is constitutionally charged with executing and administering the law.
It bears repeating. No agencies of the Executive Branch are legally authorized to create or change criminal law.
But anywhere from 10 to 40 million Americans may become felons with this ATF rule change. Even those who are trying to follow the regulations are baffled by the vague language conjured by the department.
Adding nearly $2 billion to a federal agency already spinning out of control is hardly a commendable plan. The ATF is constitutionally limited to following the legislative edicts of Congress, and until its actions are reined in, it is hardly worthy of such an influx of taxpayer funding.
