Many federal companies are bracing for the Trump tsunami — however few are more likely to face the highly effective backlash that awaits the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which pursued an aggressive gun management agenda underneath President Biden.
The A.T.F., underneath its Biden-appointed director, Steven M. Dettelbach, has been extra proactive on gun management than at any time in its latest historical past, pushing via guidelines to curb the proliferation of the untraceable selfmade firearms often called ghost weapons, clamp down on gadgets that make firearms deadlier and regulate unlicensed firearms sellers who function at gun exhibits or on-line.
That earned reward from gun management teams and drew the enmity of Republicans, together with President-elect Donald J. Trump. He’s virtually sure to choose a proponent of gun rights as director or just go away the job vacant, as earlier presidents have achieved, leaving the small and embattled bureau rudderless and weak.
However the greatest risk, within the view of Mr. Dettelbach, could come from the Republican-controlled Congress, which is threatening to chop the funds for the federal company. Its core operate is essentially apolitical, becoming a member of with native enforcement to hint weapons utilized in crimes and dismantle trafficking rings by offering intelligence and technical help.
“People who don’t think that law enforcement, including A.T.F., has anything to do with driving down violent crime are just wrong — it didn’t happen by accident,” mentioned Mr. Dettelbach, sitting in his sprawling, barely matted workplace on the bureau’s Washington headquarters this month.
“What I am concerned about is that is that people will take their eye off the ball, that they’ll either get complacent or political, or some combination of those things,” mentioned Mr. Dettelbach, a former U.S. lawyer in Ohio, whose low-key, Midwestern fashion belies his willingness to take actions which have elicited political assaults and authorized challenges.
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