Opinion
Earlier this month, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) director Steven Dettelbach met with Margaret Brennan on the CBS broadcast Face the nation to discuss gun violence and gun laws in the United States. In addition to the interview, Director Dettelbach provided a hands-on demonstration with what he called one of the ATF’s “leading experts” to educate CBS viewers about threats such as the often nicknamed “ghost guns.”
The segment was less about education and more about advocacy, with Ms. Brennan acting as a willing participant to promote the narrative that guns are the problem in America and that stricter gun laws and limits on the Second Amendment are the solutions that this country needs. Instead of presenting data supported by legally valid arguments for any proposed changes to gun laws or the Second Amendment, Director Dettelbach and his “expert” have demonstrated that the federal government does not have the capacity to manage guns or gun violence.
It is actually questionable whether Director Dettelbach, let alone his firearms “expert,” has much experience with firearms.
Do you shoot too, brother?
In what surely must have been a powerful demonstration of the sheer death and destruction that firearms can cause, Director Dettelbach brought along a selection of various weapons to show a visibly uncomfortable and disgusted Mrs Brennan what the ATF. Director Dettelbach brought his head of the Firearms Ammunition Technology Division, Chris Bort, to witness this performance.
Mr. Bort, who director Dettelbach at one point introduced as a “top expert,” couldn’t dismantle a Glock slide, eventually giving in to the camera. To be fair, Mr. Bort was clearly uncomfortable with the assigned task, given his stilted responses to Ms. Brennan’s questions, which often had to be handled by Director Dettelbach.
Unfortunately, every time Director Dettelbach stepped in to save his “expert” from having to answer politically or even basic questions about firearms, his lack of general knowledge on the subject was demonstrated. At one point Director Dettelbach called a drum magazine a “75-round clip.”
For non-gun owners, a magazine feeds rounds into the gun’s chamber, while a clip holds the cartridges together. They are not interchangeable pieces and are definitely not the same thing.
This is important, because these definitions find their way into gun control laws written and enforced by the ignorant.
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Real alarm bells
Discussing the difficulty the ATF has in tracking and identifying individuals committing gun crimes, the ATF director implied that gun traffickers should notify the ATF or outright refuse legal sales of firearms on the basis of certain “alarm bells”, as the director stated. It.
One such scenario given by Director Dettelbach was as follows:
“…someone walks into your store, in a border state and spends $12,000 cash on one of these (.50 caliber rifles), so there’s no credit card trail, I mean, my word, we hope that people will help us as Americans and continue to help us and not make that sale and protect our safety.”
Last time I checked, cash was still a form of legal tender in this country. There may be several reasons why a citizen may choose to pay cash for any number of items. The fact that the government is uncomfortable with making you pay in cash is, in fact, the best reason to do so.
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The next example Director Dettelbach gave was the tone-deaf statement that “all kinds of alarm bells should ring” if a couple walks into a gun store and the man asks all the questions, but then the woman buy the weapon. As if the only plausible explanation is that the woman is being manipulated by a bad actor who intends to use the weapon himself for nefarious reasons.
It may be that the woman, as in my case, when I went to purchase my gun, wanted to avoid the probably irritating male chauvinism that I might face and that, since my husband is a firearms expert, she also thought to ask me questions may not be possible.
I’ll tell you what should set alarm bells ringing: the fact that the head of the ATF doesn’t understand basic firearms nomenclature.
What are you saying?
During the interview portion, Director Dettelbach manages to sidestep, albeit clumsily, Ms. Brennan’s blatant advocacy for a national registry of gun owners. He makes sure to add that the ATF’s job is more challenging due to the lack of a central national gun registry, stating:
“The way that doesn’t happen is we type in a person’s name and it comes up ‘oh, they own so many guns.’ Congress prohibited us from doing so.”
Correction: The Constitution prohibits the ATF from doing this, because our founding law does not give the federal government that authority.
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Thank God for that; the level of naivety and ignorance displayed is argument enough against giving these people more power over guns. When asked how they are working to “refine” their agency and work within these congressional constraints, Director Dettelbach explained:
“…we use what’s called crime gun intelligence, which is a fancy term, but it basically applies to the ability to track the gun, to pick up a crime gun, right. So a crime gun, which is something that has to do with a crime, and we squeeze every little piece of evidence and information we can out of what comes out of the gun, the bullet; the cartridge case being ejected from the back of the gun; the outside of the gun, things like the serial number; and the inside of the gun, the markings inside the gun.”
I’m glad he was able to clarify that a crime gun is a gun involved in a crime and that the “thing” that comes out of the gun is called a bullet. It seems like what the ATF does is pretty standard; It’s called evidence gathering.
It’s not a fancy term, but it’s still tried and true. While I am all for legal gun ownership and protection of the Second Amendment, it may not be a bad idea to make sure Director Dettelbach and Mr. Bort do not touch any weapons; I don’t think they could operate one safely.
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