According to a new CNN investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has reassigned 80 percent of its special agents — normally charged with investigating gun crimes and policing the gun industry — to carrying out President Trump’s immigration “crackdown.” Current and former ATF officials told CNN that the reassignments have led to a historic drop in gun trafficking investigations and dealer inspections.
An ATF investigator said that the shift in priorities, paired with other Trump administration rollbacks, will have deadly consequences: “They’re de-regulating an industry that sells tools that can take people’s lives in seconds.” They warned, “We’ll have guns getting into the hands of people who definitely shouldn’t have them.”
ATF agents have joined a broader deployment of 23,000 federal officers supporting Trump’s deportation efforts. CNN reports that 23 percent of FBI agents have been detailed to immigration work, with roughly 45 percent of agents in the 25 largest field offices redirected. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seen about three-fourths of its agents diverted, while nearly all Homeland Security Investigations agents are now working on immigration cases.
reducing gun dealer oversight
The staffing reassignments could not come at a worse time for the ATF, which is tasked with inspecting gun manufacturers, importers, and dealers — Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) — to ensure they follow the law. According to CNN, the agency lost one in seven of its FFL inspectors to job reductions and retirements this year, and Trump’s proposed budget threatens to eliminate 550 of the remaining 600 inspectors. Such a gutting of the ATF would leave the gun industry practically unregulated in America.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration rescinded the ATF’s “zero tolerance” policy of revoking the licenses of FFLs who willfully violated federal law — and instead asked those who had their licenses revoked to reapply for them. The CNN investigation also found that the ATF under Trump has “adopted onerous new rules that make it nearly impossible to revoke licenses from firearms dealers who fail to do mandated background checks or who break other laws, according to former and current ATF officials.”
A former ATF official told CNN that, as a result of the changes, the agency did not revoke a single gun dealer’s license in the first quarter of this year and was on track “for at least a 90 percent drop from last year under President Joe Biden – when 195 dealers lost the ability to sell guns.”
An ATF investigator described the dramatic policy reversal: “Since January, there’s been a total 180 on our authority and what we can do. As soon as the new administration was in, we got directed from leadership to put a full stop on all revocations of federal firearms licenses.”
The investigator added, “We can’t revoke someone’s license; at most what we can do is issue a warning letter or have a warning conference. Even that is just a slap on the wrist. It isn’t anything that would put these guys out of business.”
opening the floodgates for GUN trafficking
The Trump administration’s rollbacks, staffing cuts, and reassignments have led to a 2-percent drop in the number of firearm cases referred to the Department of Justice (DOJ) by the ATF compared to the previous year, according to CNN. Similarly, the DEA has referred fewer drug cases, reflecting an 8.6-percent drop. However, these statistics likely understate the actual drop in firearm and drug cases, as they include arrests from immigration raids rather than traditional criminal investigations.
A former ATF official told CNN that FFL inspections had previously generated leads for about a third of gun trafficking investigations. But a former ATF official told CNN that the number of criminal investigations “has bottomed out. ATF agents essentially aren’t opening cases solely based on domestic firearms trafficking.”
Pam Hicks, former ATF chief counsel, said that cutting FFL inspections, which help ensure that gun dealers properly retain inventory and transaction records, “makes it less likely a crime gun can be completely traced next time. It undermines the entire system of how firearms laws work, of how the system is designed to work.”
Scott Shuchart, a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) assistant director, said that the Trump administration is “harming the country by undermining federal law enforcement…They are going to get Americans killed so they can deport foreigners.”
proposed budget cuts
The operational challenges are compounded by the Trump administration’s proposed budget. The ATF is facing more than $400 million in budget cuts, roughly a quarter of its current budget, for the fiscal year that started on October 1.
While the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, has applauded Trump’s other rollbacks — including ending the program that the ATF used to monitor dealers who sell the most crime guns — the group expressed concern about the severity of the proposed ATF budget and staffing cuts earlier this year, suggesting they “might be better done with a scalpel instead of a meat cleaver.” The NSSF warned that “[d]eep cuts could negatively impact both the firearm industry and customers who want to buy guns. Drastic budget cuts could come at the expense of National Firearms Act (NFA) form approvals, import permits, license issuance and renewals and product classifications.”
In other words, the NSSF will only champion ATF budget cuts if they do not impact the industry’s bottom line.