Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene said Monday they will send a measure to the House Appropriations panel that defunds the salary of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steve Dettelbach.
They announced the move at a field hearing in Mr. Gaetz’s Florida where witnesses spoke about what they said were ATF’s heavy-handed tactics that shut down gun shops and infringed on the rights of gun buyers.
Mr. Gaetz said they would try to zero out Mr. Dettelbach’s salary as part of an effort to “constrain resources that would otherwise be used to put people out of business and to harm our fellow Americans.”
To ax the salary, the two Republican lawmakers plan to use the Holman Rule that allows amendments to spending bills to reduce or eliminate funding to programs already authorized by Congress or to reduce or eliminate the salaries of individual federal employees.
The Holman Rule was reinstated as part of the Freedom Caucus demands on Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mr. Gaetz and Georgia’s Mrs. Greene are members of the Freedom Caucus.
The hearing focused on allegations the ATF has:
• Revoked licenses of firearms dealers over clerical errors;
• Raided firearms shops and seized information from consumer firearms transactions;
• Maintained a searchable database of nearly 1 billion ATF records on firearms owners.
“The history of the ATF is fraught with misconduct. Since 2015, thousands of guns have been stolen from the ATF national disposal branch,” said Mr. Gaetz.
Mr. Gaetz also said the “unconstitutional database” is still being used by ATF despite a reprimand by the Government Accountability Office in 2016 for maintaining the database and not adhering to the agency’s standards.
The ATF did not respond to questions about the lawmakers’ threat to defund Mr. Dettelbach’s salary.
In response to criticism of its zero-tolerance policy for gun dealers with a federal firearms license or FFL, the ATF said:
“The law allows ATF to revoke a license when the record shows that an FFL willfully committed at least one violation of the GCA or its implementing regulations. FFLs are provided due process throughout the inspection and revocation process, including the right to a hearing and to appeal a final license revocation in federal court.”
Miles Schuler, a witness at the field hearing, said he lost his firearms business after 46 years when the ATF instituted aggressive zero-tolerance policies that targeted licensed gun shops.
He said, although a background check of a customer was approved by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the AFT audit months later determined the background check was not approved.
“I was never notified in any way during the months before the audit that the approval was changed to a non-approval,” he said. “It was their opinion that I purposely and willfully used the incorrect finding from the FDLE even though FDLE made the error. It was on my paperwork [but] the ATF revoked my license and my career and livelihood.”
Brandon Herrera, a firearms expert and Second Amendment activist who holds firearms dealer licenses in Texas and North Carolina, said there is a difference between local ATF field agents and ATF agents sent by Washington.
“The local ATF field agents are usually trying to be helpful,” he said. “The problem starts when you start incorporating the feds in the D.C. offices. That’s where you start having people who have political agendas — and especially with the zero-tolerance rule.”
“There is a penalty for the agents as well,” he said. “If they fail to catch small clerical errors [and] somebody comes back behind them and finds one later that they should have caught. That agent can also lose their career. So now they have pensions on the line.”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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