| Chapter
11
Guns and Gun Control
By David J. Krajicek
ATFE, Gun Groups
The ATFE
Website: www.atf.gov
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has about 5,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $1 billion.
It has field division regional headquarters in 23 cities and satellite offices in more than a hundred others.
The divisions are based in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Louisville, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Paul, Tamp and Washington.
The ATF has undergone significant changes since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Since 1972, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had been a tax-collecting, enforcement and regulatory arm of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
On Jan. 24, 2003, the ATF was transferred under the Homeland Security act to the Department of Justice. ”Explosives” was added to its name, 30 years after it was added to the bureau’s investigative portfolio. At that time, the historical “tax and trade” roles of agency were assigned to a Treasury Department bureau, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade.
The ATF roles and initiatives include these:
- Gun Tracing. The bureau’s gun tracing operation is the largest of its kind in the world. Its National Tracing Center processed 265,800 trace requests in 2005.
- Firearms License Inspections. The ATF licenses the more than 100,000 federal firearms dealers in the United States.
- National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. The bureau has a leadership role in NIBIN, which allows federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to compare gun evidence from crimes. NIBIN has some 225 sites at which agencies can add bullet and casing images to the database to search for matches.
- National Laboratory Services. ATF has laboratories in Maryland, Georgia and California where firearms examiners, fingerprint specialists and forensic chemists provide scientific expertise and support for the agency's investigations. The National Laboratory Center in Maryland includes the first facility in the world dedicated to fire scene investigations.
- Firearms and Explosives Training. The bureau providesfirearms and explosives training to other federal, state, local and international law enforcement agencies. Its National Center for Explosives Training and Research has trained almost 6,000 bomb technicians and investigators since 2001.
The agency traces its history to 1789, when the first Congress imposed a tax on imported spirits to pay the Revolutionary War debt. It won its highest-profile role during Prohibition, beginning in 1919. The “revenoors” of the bureau’s Prohibition Unit became famous for busting up stills, kegs and crates of whiskey.
The bureau was concerned with alcohol and tobacco until the Gun Control Act of 1968, which added explosives to its responsibilities. Arson was added to its portfolio when the Anti-Arson Act of 1982 made arson a federal crime.
Like the FBI, ATFE has a history of long-tenured directors—just four in its first 25 years. In 2006, director Carl Truscott resigned following criticism of $19 million in cost overruns at the bureau’s new headquarters in northeast Washington.
Truscott added $300,000 in luxury extras to the director’s suite, including a $65,000 conference table. The acting director in 2007 was Michael J. Sullivan.
National Rifle Association
Website: www.nra.org
The NRA was founded in 1871 by two Union army officers who were fed up with the lack of marksmanship among soldiers. For it first 63 years, the organization focused on shooting skills and the promotion of shooting sports among youngsters.
Even today, the NRA accurately insists that it is more than a political machine. The organization is a leader in firearms education through its adult firearms certification courses and youth gun safety programs.
It began political activism by creating its Legislative Affairs Division in 1934, when Congress—spurred by gangland violence--passed the National Firearms Act, America’s first attempt at federal gun control. The NRA chose passive lobbying, mailing “legislative facts” to members, who might or might not be prompted to contact their elected officials.
It began taking a much more aggressive approach in 1974, when it formed its lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, seven years after passage of another significant federal law, the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The move was due largely to Harlon Carter, a chimerical figure in NRA history. Carter, a blunt Texan, was a border patrol agent and longtime member of the NRA board. He became the organization’s executive vice president in 1977 at a rancorous association meeting--known as the “Cincinnati Revolt”--that shifted the NRA’s focus from shooting sports to gun rights.
In testimony to Congress in 1976, Carter laid out the fundamental position the NRA has championed ever since: that lawful citizens have a right to own guns, regardless of the actions of armed criminals.
"Law-abiding people, and particularly gun-owners, are tired of being blamed for crime,” Carter said. “They are sick of being harassed with federal bureaucracy and having their freedom progressively and incessantly chipped away because of the inability or unwillingness of their government officials to deal with those responsible for crime, namely, criminals."
LaPierre Era
In the ensuing 40 years, the NRA’s various leaders—including Wayne LaPierre, Carter’s protégé and chief executive since 1991; Tanya Metaksa, chief lobbyist during the 1990s; board member and ex-rock star Ted Nugent, and the actor Charlton Heston—have acted as guardians of the Second Amendment, bulwarks against federal oversight of firearms and lightning rods for those who favor gun control.
From its headquarters in Fairfax, Va., the NRA has developed into a single-issue juggernaut that is not quite like any other.
It can be brutally effective and utterly unforgiving. (For an example, click here for a link to a sidebar on Jim Zumbo, the outdoor writer.)
The organization has used memorable slogans that have helped frame debate over firearms for the past generation.
To the NRA, the Second Amendment is “America’s First Freedom.”
In early the mid-1970s, the NRA and its supporters began espousing a dizzying creed that still clings to it decades later: “Guns don’t shoot people. People shoot people.”
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