Obama’s ATF: Too Busy Gun Smuggling to Arrest Criminals?
A new report from Syracuse University researchers notes that the Obama administration fails to prosecute violent criminals who most likely contribute to gun-related violence. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is supposed to investigate and arrest those who violate federal gun laws (e.g., felons in possession, straw purchasers).
Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reports that January 2011 was “the lowest level to which federal weapons prosecutions have fallen since January 2001, when they were 445 at the time President George W. Bush assumed office.” That quote is the basis for this report, because history contains some interesting trends, as shown in the graph below.
To understand the complete trend, see TRAC’s graph showing the gradual decline in ATF referrals from its peak in 2004 continuing through early 2011. (Annual data for 2009-2010 unavailable for inclusion in above graph.)
When George H.W. Bush took office, the earliest TRAC data available indicates that the ATF began a trend of increasing referrals to federal prosecutors.
When Clinton became president in 1993, his “assault weapons” ban was one of the most sweeping gun control laws ever passed by Congress. But while Clinton sought to restrict gun ownership for law-abiding citizens, criminal prosecution of federal gun laws declined. TRAC data shows that during the Reno Department of Justice (DOJ), ATF referrals for prosecution dropped 44.3% from 1992 to 1998, before rebounding to 1992 (pre-Clinton) levels by 2000.
Here’s another example of Clinton’s attitude of “treat the law-abiding as guilty until proven innocent, but give the benefit of the doubt to convicted felons.” Out of Clinton’s 141 pardons granted on his final day in office, 15 convicts were involved with the cocaine trade and four were firearms related, including one arms dealer.
Who’s more likely to use a firearm to commit a violent felony: a cocaine dealer or a law-abiding citizen?
The first Bush administration had no problem prosecuting federal firearms law-breakers: Under the Ashcroft DOJ, ATF referrals increased 59.5%.* TRAC concluded that Ashcroft’s commitment to enforcing existing law had a significant positive impact:
Another factor behind the startling growth in the ATF enforcement efforts may have been the active support of Attorney General John Ashcroft since the Bush Administration first came into office…
Ashcroft may have been the most pro-gun attorney general in recent history, authoring an opinion that the Second Amendment was an individual right.
This is because the BATFE and other agencies, Federal and state, know that citizens may grumble or even shout, but will in the end surrender their firearms. Gangsta crack dealers and narcotraficantes, on the other hand, will shoot them in the face, gut, or wherever’s handy — and that dangerous.
Nope. Wrong Answer.
I might bury them in the back woods, I might hide them behind the sheet rock, I might fight… but I will never, ever turn in a gun because some politician or agency thug tells me to.
Maybe you should consider a different strategy. Have some guns that they know about and you can turn in like a dutifull little serf and have others that you know they don’t have on record that you can keep. After all, the courts have decided that you don’t have to self incriminate if you are breaking the law. So buy some that you know they don’t know about and keep them safe.
Maybe I’m way ahead of you…
It’s really a question of economics, government agency funding style.
Put simply, an agency like BATFE lives or dies by its “case clearance” rate. This is not the same thing as its prosecution rate; a case is considered “cleared” if a guilty plea is entered, a fine paid, etc. (And in BATFE’s case, a weapon or weapons confiscated and destroyed.)
This becomes critical every year at that Federal Holy of Holies, Budget Time- the time when they go to Congress like Oliver Twist, saying “Please, Sir, may I have some more?” But it’s not porridge they want, it’s money and authority.
The “case clearance” rate is their proof that they are (a) doing a good job, and (b) deserve to have more funding and authority to do more of same. In this context, what matters is the total number of “clearances”. Not what kind of “case” each one was to begin with.
Which means that, if you’re a BATFE agent looking to get ahead in the agency, cruising gun shows looking to nail people for missing a box-check on a Form 4473, or selling an old, antique .22 single shot rifle with a 15 7/8″ barrel, or any other sort of nitpicking “violation” or “offense”, beats chasing gang-bangers and narcotraficantes’ all hollow. You can probably pick up a dozen cases in one day, all of which end with (a) a guilty or no lo contendre plea, a fine, and you getting to seize and destroy a gun. All of which will be resolved in under 30 days. Mainly because most of the “criminals” can’t afford a lawyer. (And most public defenders, who don’t like guns anymore than you do, will tell their clients to plead instead of fighting it. As a bonus, the ACLU won’t take their case, either.)
By comparison, a case “clearance” against, say, a member of MS-13 can take up to three years, fought through multiple appeals, with the perp lawyered up every step of the way. Half the lawyers being from ACLU even if the guy has high-priced legal beagles on retainer; it’s a “philosophy” thing.
Plus, in the end, the gun charges will be plea-bargained away, because DEA mostly wants to get a conviction on the drug-related charges- which means they get the glory, and get to look better than you do at Budget Time.
(When BATF was at Treasury, the rivalry between it and DEA was legendary; the two agencies hated each other like poison.)
Your boss is Not Pleased With You. (Like you, he went to work for BATFE mainly because he hates guns, not because he is either competent or particularly interested in actual law-enforcement work- it’s too much work.) You have used a lot of His Money (his budget) to prosecute a case which didn’t get him, and BATFE, the credit. He wants to know why your “case clearance” is so low.
Hmm. Gee. Spend three years on one case, that you basically lose. Or cruise gun shows every weekend to grab low-hanging fruit so at Budget Time, you have 100+ “case clearances”, to add to all the others, so that your boss, and his Uber-Boss (the Director), can go to Congress and say, “Look what we’ve accomplished! See all the evil guns we’ve taken off the streets! May we please have some more so we can do even better next year?”
Anyone who has ever worked in a bureaucracy, especially a government one, knows the “right answer” to this two-state problem.
Plus, at a gun show, you are a Feared Government Agent, with power, because law-abiding people are afraid of offending the Powers That Be, and you are the chosen instrument of those Powers. Going after a drug dealer, you are a target, because he doesn’t give a damn whether he “offends” the government or not. Plus, he probably likes killing people. To him, you aren’t fearsome- you’re annoying. And a good candidate for a burst from a (highly illegal) fully-automatic weapon.
It’s no contest. Back to the gun show. Every. Single. Weekend.
Scaring citizens is way more fun than getting in drug runners’ faces. Safer, too.
It’s just that simple.
Truth In Advertising Moment; I saw BATF, as it was then, “in action” on an almost daily basis thirty-plus years ago. And learned that there was no point in calling them on a drug bust. Either they were at a gun show, or “in conference” getting a guilty plea out of somebody they’d hooked at a gun show. Things never change at BATF(E), even with a move from Treasury to Justice.
It also should be noted that BATF wasn’t even a Bureau prior to 1969. It was elevated to that status by none other than Richard Nixon. Who thought he hadn’t gotten sufficient support from “sportsmen” in 1968; they voted overwhelmingly for Hubert Humphrey, a strong defender of the Second Amendment (another reason Ted Kennedy hated the Hube as much as Nixon did).
In plain English, Tricky Dick was looking for payback. Well, he certainly got it. And the rest of us have been footing the bill ever since.
clear ether
eon
Another example of great reporting… Thanks for staying on top of this scandal and framing up the ideology behind the decision making which allowed such a despicable act to occur. Criminals are foot soldiers of the far left in the battle against our Founders values and all law abiding citizens. In the case of both Holder and Gonzales, we see the manipulation of Justice to not only advance liberal ideology, but also to enforce social justice for their respective cultural groups. I believe that the ATF, and the Administration, was attempting to create and document a situation that they could not prove otherwise… To provide argument for additional gun control measures. Conspiracy theory? Who knows the motivation, but this law abiding citizen considers what happened a criminal act perpetrated under color of law and deserving of full prosecution. It’s time for Congress to step up, step in, and actively pursue this affront to our country and it’s laws.
I think one all telling fact in this gun walker,fast and furious debacle that seems to get little mention is the fact a sovereign nation Mexico had thousands of guns dumped in their country with Zero permission or knowledge of this operation! What would happen if this situation was reversed on us? Would you call this a criminal act against our nations sovereignty? And I doubt this is all an ATF game plan! This turd is rolling up hill maybe?
Talk !! Talk !!
Talk !!
Logic, reason, law, persuasion !!
How many will agree that when “they” get our guns, it
will be over our dead bodies ??
Simply, without more politics. Period.
“Obama’s ATF: Too Busy Gun Smuggling to Arrest Criminals”
OUCH! That’s gonna leave a mark…
Only 20 more months ’til we evict the Marxist from the Oval Office & cancel “Amateur Hour” at the White House.
NOBAMA 2012
“Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink.” P.J.O’Rourke
They don’t understand or they don’t care. Either way,
The Bill of Rights is Not Negotiable, not one single word.
EVER!
Wow, what a strawman argument. “Who’s more likely to use a firearm to commit a violent felony: a cocaine dealer or a law-abiding citizen?” can be read as “Who’s more likely to commit a crime, a criminal or non-criminal?”. The very fact that they use a gun to commit a felony no longer makes them “law-abiding”, coacine dealer or not, so it isn’t really a valid question, is it?
Wow, Dave. The question is valid, if perhaps simplistic. Criminals, by their nature, use guns to commit violence. But obviously, Clinton, Reno, Obama, and Holder don’t seem to understand the answer. So what’s your point?
Of course, Dave.
All the more reason to go after the criminal instead of the law-abiding citizen. Smugglers and straw-purchasers are not law abiding. Holder appears to be facilitating smuggling and not prosecuting straw purchase.
This would make an easy lawsuit against the U.S., but, Mexico would rather pursue frivolous litigation with immigration rights, for which they have no chance of winning.
How many Democrat votes is my AK47 worth?
While I agree with the articles intent and it does make a valid point we must also recognize some of the reasons for the decline. In the mid 2000′s (about the time the decline started) many of the Federal sentancing guidlines were lowered, and State Legislatures made there sentancing stricter; meaning the criminal would get more time in State Court than Federal, so allot of those cases have been sent to the states to prosecute.
I do not believe this covers the complete drop in cases but explains part of the change in a legitimate manner. This shows the difficulty in studying these types of figures, it becomes very difficult to control for all the things that effect the numbers. That is the biggest failing of most of the anti-freedom crowd’s studies and statistics; no control for other items. I’d hate to see us fall into that same trap.
Catfish: Where did you (not) get your data? The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is the source for all my federal and state adjudication data. Due to space considerations and the topic at hand, I didn’t include state-level data. But since you brought it up…
Here’s 2004 state-level sentencing data from the 75 largest urban counties. (Select “Sentencing” and then select Table 27.)
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/html/fdluc/2004/fdluc04st.pdf
Notice that the mean state sentence for weapons violations is 6 months.
BJS didn’t report federal sentencing data for 2004 and 2005. However, in 2003 (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cfjs03.pdf) the mean federal court sentence for weapons violations was 83.7 months, or about 14 times as long (Table 5.2).
In 2006, the mean federal court sentence for weapons violations was 88.4 months (Table 5.2). (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/html/fjsst/2006/fjs06st.pdf)
Now you claim my report is misleading because the ATF began referring to state courts instead of the federal courts, because state courts gave stiffer sentences?
In 2004, BJS reported a total of 387 weapons defendants being sentenced in state courts, but 8,082 awaited sentencing in federal courts (Table 5.2). http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cfjs04.pdf)
Your entire thesis has to be derogated because you did what you accused me of doing, except your action is documented here for all to see.
Looks like you fell into your own trap.
Why do we have the BATFE? They are worse criminals than the criminals! With no BATFE the flow of arms into Mexico would stop! Also, we have a second ammendment. Disolve and fire all BATFE agents and the agency. The savings would be real and large.
Had hand in 1968 Gun Control Act. Lack of enforcement only problem. Get ATF working with local officials and making joint seizures and arrests and prosecuting in local or federal court. Get cooperation from Federal and Local Prosecutors and U.S. attorneys. It worked for me in 1966/67 with group of ATF agents making and prosecuting more than 300 firearms cases w/o GCA, using FFA.
The more government we have the worse off we are!