U.S. Representative Barry Moore from Alabama has joined Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri in co-sponsoring a bill that seeks to dismantle and shut down the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). In the past, I have been skeptical of this idea as eliminating the agency does not necessarily put an end to some of the amoral legislation it enforces, and moving these duties over to the FBI would be like complaining that your 3rd-grade teacher is unfair and replacing them with the Gestapo. However, Burlison and Moore have a different solution in mind, suggesting that the ATF’s authority revert to individual states. 

While most supporters of the Second Amendment could care less about who has the authority to infringe on their rights and are more concerned with them not being violated in the first place, myself included, this opens up some options. As Americans, we have the right to choose which state we live in and which local economies we support. If we can’t vote candidates into office who will respect and defend the Constitution, we can always seek a better life in a state that does. That’s what I did. Let the criminals have their soft target states, and let those places become even less desirable. See how it works out for them. Yeah, I can get on board with this plan. 

“I am proud to stand with my friend Eric Burlison as a co-sponsor of HR374, the ‘Abolish the ATF Act.’ The ATF has repeatedly violated Americans’ Second Amendment rights, and it’s time to put an end to this unconstitutional overreach,” said Moore in a post on his X account.

The ATF was established in 1972 to regulate and enforce federal laws concerning the manufacture, sale and possession of firearms, ammunition, explosives, alcohol and tobacco. However, many see them as having gone rogue, legislating via the implementation of “rules,” either on their own or being weaponized at the direction of a sitting administration, a practice that has seen the agency admonished for exceeding its statutory authority by the United States Supreme Court. 

“The ATF is a disaster,” Burlison told Fox News Digital while expressing that the “disaster agency” has “been violating the…Second Amendment.”

“I think at the end of the day, this agency needs to be abolished, and we need to let the states police what happens to the states,” he added.

To nobody’s surprise, an ATF spokesperson responded to Burlison’s comments with a glowing review of the agency’s work.

“ATF provides enormous benefits to the American public through all of its efforts fighting violent crime every day,” said the ATF spokesperson to Fox News Digital.

This, however, is like praising the agency for stopping the purse-snatching of an elderly woman while ignoring that they blew up a senior living facility right afterward. I’m not averse to pointing out when the ATF does work in the best interest of Americans, and I do from time to time when they help FFLs secure their facilities from robberies and when they apprehend dangerous criminals, but that isn’t enough to absolve them from their unconstitutional sins. With the incoming Trump administration, a growing list of federal agencies may be on the chopping block, or at least up for some serious Department of Government Efficiency restructuring from the likes of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. It will be a great time to be alive if we actually get to see this happen, as running roughshod over Americans’ freedom with unmannerly impunity has overstayed its welcome, and it’s high time we see a peaceful and orderly refreshing of the tree of liberty.