Strangle the Bastard Child of Prohibition: Abolish the ATF!

[CCTelander]

A good one from the late, great Will Grigg.

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Strangle the Bastard Child of Prohibition: Abolish the ATF!

Whatever would we do without helpful people like this goon?

Acting on its unerring instinct for expanding its own power while exacerbating the suffering of its subjects, the federal government, at the request of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and with the approval of President Trump, is planning to deploy a contingent from the entity known as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (commonly called the ATF) to Chicago.

This will do nothing to abate the problem of violent crime in the Second City, but will provide the agency with continued rationale for its misbegotten existence – which, as it happens, began in that same city decades ago.

The ATF was born as the Bureau of Prohibition – a brief experiment in federal behavior control that was made possible by the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution. Chicago native Elliot Ness, an inveterate self-promoter, headed much-celebrated bootlegging task force that spent six months raiding Al Capone’s breweries, which was in effect a price-support program for one of the gangster’s few morally sound enterprises.

Self-mythologizing fraud Elliot Ness.

Ness and his underlings eventually compiled a 5,000-count bootlegging indictment against Capone, which the US Attorney politely ignored as he filed tax-evasion charges that eventually brought about the gangster’s imprisonment – and enhanced the power of the immeasurably deadlier criminal syndicate called the IRS.

When the 18th Amendment was repealed, the Prohibition Bureau lost any rationale for its lawful existence – yet rather than being abolished, it was rechristened and given an even more expansive mandate.

Over the past 25 years[*], the ATF has been consistently mired in misconduct, often of a murderous nature. The April 1993 slaughter of the Branch Davidians in their sanctuary outside Waco, Texas began with an unnecessary ATF armed raid called “Operation Showtime” – which was staged to deflect attention from an internal corruption scandal. More recently the agency was involved in the “Operation Fast and Furious” imbroglio, in which it pressured federally licensed gun dealers to sell weapons to agents of Mexican cartels in a supposed sting operation.

In ways both grand and petty, the ATF has plagued and persecuted its betters. In one telling but long-forgotten episode more than a decade ago, a college student in Georgia found himself surrounded by a thugscrum of ATF chair-moisteners – one of whom planted his knee upon the victim’s neck, placing the full measure of his tax-enhanced girth behind it – because he was seen wearing a ninja costume as part of a campus event. Unfortunately for the victim, that campus was temporarily infested by ATF hirelings who – no doubt between visits to the local brothels – were undergoing “Safe Streets Training.”

The ATF is an appendage of the Leviathan that exists without so much of an echo of a whisper of a hint of constitutional legitimacy, for the sole purpose of providing secure, albeit socially useless, employment for reprobates, criminals, and degenerates. No provision of the US Constitution authorizes any agency of the federal government to regulate alcohol, tobacco, or explosives, and the Second Amendment explicitly forecloses federal infringement of the right to own and carry firearms. This means that the ATF is literally a bastard agency carrying out an illegitimate mission.

The only useful activity for federal legislators consists of repealing existing statutes and abolishing federal agencies. Wisconsin Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, in defiance of all rational expectations for denizens of the political class, has made himself modestly useful by proposing a bill called the ATF Elimination Act that would impose an immediate hiring freeze at the agency and order its administrators to prepare a report on transferring its existing functions to the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and other departments.

“The ATF is a scandal-ridden, largely duplicative agency that has been branded by failure and lacks a clear mission,” declares Representative Sensenbrenner. Abolishing the ATF would be “a logical place to begin draining the swamp and acting in the best interest of the American Taxpayer.”

Regrettably, Sensenbrenner’s bill would merely channel the institutional feculence of the ATF into two other federal agencies that are badly in need of abolition. Agencies of that kind will endure while there are lives to ruin and liberties to infringe — and those on the receiving end of its malign attention are willing to countenance their continued existence.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/everything-will/strangle-the-bastard-child-of-prohibition-abolish-the-atf/


*In truth it's been a hell of a lot longer than 25 years. Since the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968 the ATF has basically been a totally lawless agency, almost completely out of control. Between 1968 and the early 1980s there were several congressional hearings on ATF's behavior. Based upon the findings of those hearings, the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, in its report entitled The Right to Keep and Bear Arms observed "...it is apparent that ATF enforcement tactics made possible by current federal firearms laws are constitutionally, legally, and practically reprehensible." Over the course of the last 54 years ATF has consistently and predominantly targeted innocent individuals with no criminal knowledge or intent, and has engaged in the very worst forms of malfeasance imaginable, including entrapment, planting evidence, manufacturing evidence and institutionalized perjury. They have ruined many thousands of innocent lives and murdered thousands of innocent people. if ever a govt agency deserved to be abolished ATF is it.

 

[TheTexan]

"Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" - this is a good name for an annual festival

 

[Occam's Banana]

"Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" - this is a good name for an annual festival

Or a gift shop.

 

[CCTelander]

"Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" - this is a good name for an annual festival

Or a gift shop.

It’d make a pretty good band name too.

 

[CCTelander]

Raise your hand if you're shocked. Beuller? Beuller?

How the ATF Manufactures Crime
By CHARLES C. W. COOKE December 10, 2013 9:00 AM

A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation exposes the agency’s shameful tactics.

Since the president was reelected in November of last year, a good deal of poison has been poured into Washington’s grimy alphabet soup. Among the departments that have become embroiled in scandal are the IRS, the DOJ, the DOE, the EPA, the NSA, the USDA, and, of course, the ATF. This week, the lattermost is back in the news — and for good reason.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is probably best known these days for the failure of its disastrous Fast and Furious scheme — a botched initiative that aimed to give American guns to Mexican cartels first and to ask questions later. Under pressure, the administration was quick to imply that the mistake was an aberration. But a watchdog report, published last week by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, suggests that the caprice, carelessness, and downright incompetence that marked the disaster was no accident. In fact, that it is endemic in the ATF. [They left off outright criminality. - CCT]

After a bungled sting attracted the suspicion of the Milwaukee press earlier this year, reporters started to examine similar enterprises in the rest of the country. What they found astonished them. Among the tactics they discovered ATF agents employing were using mentally disabled Americans to help run unnecessary sting operations; establishing agency-run “fronts” in “safe zones” such as schools and churches; providing alcohol, drugs, and sexual invitations to minors; destroying property and then expecting the owners to pick up the tab; and hiring felons to sell guns to legal purchasers. Worse, perhaps, in a wide range of cases, undercover agents specifically instructed individuals to behave in a certain manner — and then arrested and imprisoned them for doing so. This is government at its worst. And it appears to be standard operating procedure.

As with Fast and Furious, the primary objective of the ATF’s stings seems not to be to fight a known threat but instead to manufacture crime. Across the country, the agency has set up shops in which it attempts to facilitate or to encourage illegal behavior, and it has drafted citizens into the scheme without telling them that they were involved. It is fishing — nonchalantly, haphazardly, even illegally. And the consequences can go hang.

Some of the stories are heartrending. Tony Bruner, a convicted felon with an IQ of 50, was hired in Wichita to work at “Bandit Trading,” a fake store that agents had established as a front. Bruner didn’t realize that he was working for the ATF — he thought he had finally found a steady job. But the agents knew how valuable Bruner could be to them, recognizing immediately that he was disabled (or “slow-headed,” in one agent’s unlovely phrase) and that he would therefore be easy to manipulate. Having established his trust, agents asked Bruner to find guns for them, which he agreed to do. Eventually, Bruner got rather good at it and ended up arranging dozens of gun sales.

“I was just doing my job. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong,” Bruner said in court. “They tricked me into believing I was doing a good job. And they’d tell me I was doing a good job, pat me on the back, telling me, ‘You’re doing a good job.’ We’d hug each other and stuff like that, and they treated me like they cared about me. I told ’em I had a felony, I’m trying to stay out of trouble.”

Alas, the agency had no intention whatsoever of allowing Bruner to stay out of trouble. Indeed, it ensured that the opposite was the case. Having used him to arrange a series of illegal sales, agents arrested him and charged him “with more than 100 counts of being a felon in possession of a weapon.” As with most of the victims of the program, Bruner was persuaded to enter a guilty plea instead of risk a trial. He was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison. According to the Journal Sentinel’s report, “the judge told him he was getting a big break because he could have gotten 10 to 12 years.” But Bruner didn’t see it this way, telling the judge that he thought he might be killed in prison by inmates who believed that he had been willingly working with authorities.

At best the ATF’s new [New? These aren't new. ATF has been doing this shit since their inception. - CCT] techniques constitute illegal entrapment. At worst, they are downright tyrannical. Entrapment is legally permitted if a suspect initiates a crime in the presence of an undercover agent or if he can reasonably be deemed to have been predisposed to commit the crime when offered an opportunity to do so. But it is difficult to see how either of these tests is being met in the Bruner case or in others. Indeed, cases using entrapment are often thrown out of court if the government is seen to have put too much pressure on a suspect or to have made breaking the law so easy or attractive as to render restraint impossible. Per the paper’s report, ATF tactics involved offering ridiculous prices for firearms to attract straw purchasers, requesting that suspects buy specific firearms that carry tougher sentences, or, as it did in one case, showing a known felon how to saw off a shotgun so that they could charge him with a more serious violation when he did it. Will anyone claim that these tactics are legal?

That they are immoral, too, needs less spelling out. Because no formal arrangements were made with the individuals whom the agency selected for involuntary cooperation, there were no means by which they could claim protection for their behavior after the fact. In other words: The federal government knowingly ruined their lives without telling them. And for what? Well, apparently to try to pick low-hanging fruit.

At each step, the behavior is unjustifiable: Randomly fishing for criminals is outrageous in and of itself; doing so when there is no known threat is worse; and being aware that you are probably sentencing your chosen accomplices to more time in prison in the pursuit of something intangible is worse still. But involving those who are non compos mentis? Ruining their lives, too? For this, there is a special place in hell.

Sometimes, in the course of legitimate investigation, unfortunate things happen. But to contrive these schemes on a whim is something else altogether. As a people, we grudgingly allow the government to conduct surveillance and infiltration schemes if we believe that it has an exceptionally good reason to do so. The ATF didn’t. Typically, sting operations are reserved for the neutralization of known threats — organized crime, terrorism — and they are designed to keep tabs on people who have already been identified as suspects or as known participants in illegal or dangerous behavior. Given the ATF’s finite resources and the wealth of problems in America already, one might ask the agency why it feels the need to go around inventing crimes.

It is possible that the American people are experiencing scandal fatigue. The sheer number of embarrassing revelations about the federal government this year probably made it difficult for the citizenry to focus in on the details of each and almost certainly rendered each subsequent revelation less impressive. Nevertheless, even the least interested of spectators is aware there is a broader problem here — and one caused by the government’s growing too big and too unwieldy.

Indeed, even the president knows. In the course of pushing back against the rather reasonable implication that poor management might have had at least something to do with the disasters that have occurred on his watch, Barack Obama last week inadvertently told the truth. “The challenge that we have going forward,” he told Chris Matthews, “is not so much my personal management style or particular issues around White House organization” but that “we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly.”

This is true. And, as the Journal Sentinel’s stellar investigative work has reminded us, there are few more badly designed than the ATF.

— Charles C. W. Cooke is a staff writer at National Review.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/12/how-atf-manufactures-crime-charles-c-w-cooke/

 

[CCTelander]

///

 

[CCTelander]

 

[CCTelander]

Another Will Grigg bump.

 

[CCTelander]

Gun crackdowns have already led to too many federal abuses
BY JAMES BOVARD, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 03/07/18 12:30 PM EST


President Trump declared last week that the law enforcement should “take the guns first, go through due process second.” But the history of federal firearms enforcement shows that due process is often a mirage when federal bureaucrats drop their hammer. Before enacting sweeping new gun prohibitions, we should remember the collateral damage and constitutional absurdities from previous federal crackdowns.

Gun control advocates have called for prohibiting possession of AR-15 rifles — a ban that could create five million new felons overnight, since most owners would not meekly surrender their firearms at the nearest federal office. Others advocate outlawing all semi-automatic firearms — an edict first floated by the Clinton administration that would create tens of millions of new offenders.

But before vesting vast new power in federal enforcers, the record of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agency must be considered. A 1982 Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution report on ATF concluded, "Enforcement tactics made possible by current firearms laws are constitutionally, legally, and practically reprehensible.” Outrageous abuses have continued to the present day. An analysis conducted for the University of Chicago found that ATF heavily targeted racial minorities in its entrapment operations. And across the nation, ATF has been caught using mentally handicapped individuals in sting operations.

Sweeping new firearms prohibitions would enable the feds to selectively target unpopular offenders. The biggest debacle resulting from prior such targeting occurred 25 years ago last week outside of Waco, Texas. The federal Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agency saw the Branch Davidians — a fringe Protestant group that quickly became maligned as a cult — as the perfect patsies for a high-profile raid that would make G-men look like heroes.

Waco illustrates how, if the feds decide to vilify someone, their prior efforts to comply with the law will vanish from the record. In July 1992, ATF agent Davy Aguilera visited the Branch Davidians’ gun dealer, Henry McMahon, who suggested the Davidians were illegally converting semiautomatic firearms to full automatic firing capacity, a federal felony. When Davidian leader David Koresh was told that allegation, he invited Aguilera to visit the Davidians’ residence and carry out an on-the-spot inspection. Aguilera refused the invitation and his subsequent affidavit application to search the Davidians’ residence “contained an incredible number of false statements,” according to a 1996 congressional report.

Federal agencies will likely design crackdowns on firearms violators to maximize publicity and impress Congress. On February 28, 1993, more than 70 ATF agents launched a frontal attack (including 3 military helicopters) on the Davidians’ sprawling wooden residence. Prior to the assault, the ATF alerted several television stations to assure coverage of a raid expected to seize a big cache of weapons. CBS’s 60 Minutes disclosed that ATF agents said “the initial attack on that cult in Waco was a publicity stunt — the main goal of which was to improve ATF's tarnished image." A 1996 congressional investigation noted that ATF deliberately chose a “dynamic entry approach. The bias toward the use of force may in large part be explained by a culture within ATF,” including “promotional criteria.”

Gun owners who are targeted will find it almost impossible to learn about federal conniving. ATF claimed a surprise attack was necessary because Koresh almost never came out of his home. Six years later, thanks to FOIA hounding by lawyer David Hardy, the ATF finally disclosed a memo revealing that, nine days before the raid, two undercover ATF agents (recognized as such by Koresh) knocked on the door of the Davidian residence and invited Koresh to go shooting. Koresh, two other Davidians, and the two agents had a fine time shooting AR-15s and Sig-Sauer semiautomatic pistols. But easily arresting Koresh that day would have preempted the biggest raid in ATF history.

Federal guilt will vanish in the bureaucratic catacombs. After the raid turned into a debacle, leaving four ATF agents and six Davidians dead, the ATF claimed Davidians “ambushed” their agents, a story promoted by the vast majority of the media. But after ATF agents told superiors that the ATF shot first, the ATF ceased its shooting review to avoid creating documents that could subvert any court case against the Davidians. The ATF "ambush" narrative spurred the FBI to become far more punitive against the Davidians in the subsequent 51-day siege.

Gun control advocates may shrug off ATF misconduct at Waco as a once-in-a-bureaucratic-lifetime fluke. Tell that to Mexicans – 150 of whom died because of the ATF’s Fast and Furious gun-running scheme that illegally sent thousands of firearms into Mexico during Obama’s presidency.

Gun owners fear a revival of 1990s federal enforcement efforts that endlessly vilified them. In a 1994 Supreme Court case, the Clinton administration argued that gun owners are the legal equivalent of drug dealers who should be presumed guilty. The Justice Department solemnly told the Court: “One would hardly be surprised to learn that owning a gun is not an innocent act.”

The case of Harold Staples vs. U.S. involved an AR-15 that the ATF had tampered with after seizing to convert it into an illegal automatic weapon. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 7-2 court majority rebuke of the Clinton administration, declared, "The government's position, is precisely that 'guns in general' are dangerous items. (For) the Government ... the proposition that a defendant's knowledge that the item he possessed 'was a gun' is sufficient for a conviction." If the White House is occupied by someone who derides the Second Amendment, scores of millions of gun owners could be victimized by similar or worse toxic legal nonsense.

“Show us the gun and we’ll find a crime” crackdowns work out great for bureaucrats but ravage citizens and the Constitution. There are already sufficient laws on the books to disarm people who pose stark public threats, such as alleged Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz. Sweeping gun bans multiply the number of criminals while doing little or nothing to reduce violence.

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/377189-gun-crackdowns-have-already-led-to-too-many-federal-abuses

 

[CCTelander]

Well, it looks like ATF will be rewriting the law again to creat MILLIONS of felons out of thin air so they can then target them for 10 federal prison sentences. If you own any firearms created from 80% lowers, or any AR pistols, this could be important info for you.

 

[CCTelander]

More info on ATF's rewriting actual law in order to classify forced reset triggers as machine guns, thereby turning innumerable decent. law-abiding owners into instant felons.