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FBI Director Kash Patel is slated to assume control of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, an infamous federal agency in charge of enforcing gun policies.
Patel was confirmed last week to lead the FBI, after which multiple news outlets reported that President Donald Trump would also choose him to lead the ATF. The move comes after former ATF Director Steve Dettelbach, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, left the position.
Trump released an executive order earlier this month warning that the Biden administration weaponized the ATF in order to attack “law-abiding gun owners and gun businesses.” The commander-in-chief also required that all Biden firearm regulations must be rescinded.
Second Amendment advocacy organizations, which had supported Patel in his nomination to lead the FBI, also celebrated the fact that he would be asked to take leadership of the ATF.
Gun Owners of America called him a “true constitutionalist” who is also “fiercely pro-gun.” The entity recently hosted Patel as a featured speaker at their conference, during which Patel criticized the ATF and similar agencies for attempting to “strip away your rights little by little.”
“Kash Patel’s confirmation is a massive win for gun owners across America,” Gun Owners of America chairman Tim Macy said in a statement. “Unlike his predecessors, he understands that the FBI must serve the American people, not act as a political weapon against them.”
Republican members of the Senate recently wrote a letter identifying several policies which the ATF should rescind, including the “engaged in the business rule,” which the lawmakers said was an attempt to “impose universal background checks on law-abiding Americans,” as well as the “pistol brace rule,” which reclassifies pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles.
They also asked for the ATF to “immediately destroy” the millions of firearm transaction records they possess that are over twenty years old since the files “have no particular law enforcement value but do contain the sensitive information of millions of law-abiding gun owners.”
