In a nod to his vocal civilian disarmament constituency, President Joe Biden put on another anti-gun dog and pony show in the Rose Garden this afternoon. Before a crowd of assembled gun control bigwigs and assorted foes of the right to keep and bear arms, the superannuated CinC announced the nomination of yet another candidate to head the ATF (which the Big Guy, once again, called the “AFT”) and hailed the adoption of the agency’s patently unworkable and possibly unconstitutional new “ghost gun” rules designed to outlaw home-built firearms nationwide.
The latest nominee to head the government’s firearms regulatory agency, Steven Dettelbach, a former US Attorney from Ohio and failed Congressional candidate, is anti-gun enough to get the full-throated endorsement of America’s Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex…and without all of the baggage of the clownishly hoplophobic former ATF agent, David Chipman.
BREAKING: We applaud @POTUS for:
✅nominating a common-sense law enforcement professional to lead the @ATFHQ
✅finalizaing a rule to stop the deadly threat of ghost guns in America.These actions will truly help save lives. #EndGunViolence @WhiteHousehttps://t.co/OAFjqslo8F
— Brady | United Against Gun Violence (@bradybuzz) April 11, 2022
While he’s yet to be vetted, Dettelbach’s background in law enforcement and his lack years of employment in America’s gun control industry will make opposing his nomination more difficult than Chipman’s.
Dettelbach was unanimously confirmed to his job as US Attorney. That was unquestionably a large part of why the administration nominated him after the beating they took over Chipman at the hands of gun rights supporters.
Dettelbach — who described the ATF as “dedicated, professional and effective” — is already getting the support of a number of the usual law enforcement suspects who’ve never seen a gun control proposal they couldn’t get behind.
…a number of Republican-appointed federal prosecutors have offered their endorsements for Dettelbach as of Monday morning—including former Trump deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.
“Steve Dettelbach has spent many years fighting violent crime and illegal guns, and he will continue that important work as Director of ATF,” Rosenstein said.
Kenneth Wainstein, the former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division under the Bush administration; a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia; and a former counterterrorism advisor to former President George W. Bush also endorsed Dettelbach.
“Steve has devoted his career to public service, establishing himself as a leader with a reputation for building and leading strong law enforcement partnerships, for acting with absolute professionalism and without regard to politics or partisanship, and for always giving his all to fight crime and protect victims,” Wainstein said. “He will be a great ATF Director.”
Another Bush appointed U.S. Attorney, for the Northern District of Ohio, Greg White, also offered his endorsement, calling Dettelbach someone who “respects the rule of law and can work with others in law enforcement to uphold it.”
“I can also say without hesitation that Steve enjoys an outstanding reputation,” he said. “He is widely regarded as being honest, evenhanded, bright, energetic, compassionate and knowledgeable in the law.”
If Dettelbach’s confirmed, he’ll be the first ATF Director to successfully run the confirmation gauntlet since the Obama administration.
After Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced the ATF’s rulemaking actions against “ghost guns’ (and a survivor of the school shooting in Santa Clarita “celebrated progress” by reading a list of White House talking points) Biden took off his Ray-Bans and managed to read a teleprompter successfully enough to say some celebratory things about the adoption of the agency’s new “ghost gun” rules that “update old definitions” to redefine what a firearm is down to the component parts.
He compared building a gun to putting together an IKEA couch kit. Then he wandered away from the microphone (and kept talking) while holding up an 80% frame and jig to illustrate how frightening “ghost guns” really, really are. He then called them the “weapons of choice” of many criminals.
The new rules — cheered by “the strongest gunsense Commander in Chief ever to hold office”) — outlaw 80% receivers, build kits, and homemade firearms, as well as selling them without a background check. Well, legal ones anyway. Try as the anti-gun left will, the signal simply won’t be stopped.
Biden said the new rules would save lives, reduce crime, and get criminals off the streets…claims every single politician has made about every gun control law every passed anywhere.
He then regurgitated his administration’s anti-gun “priorities” including throwing more money at cities and states to hire more cops (many of which have cut their own police forces), outlawing high capacity magazines, and repealing the PLCAA (while repeating, once again, the same tired lies about the industry’s immunity).
The ATF’s new rulemaking will be the subject of a number of lawsuits that will likely play out in the courts for years. However the New York gun rights case goes, it won’t affect the regulatory deference shown to agencies like ATF when they arbitrarily and capriciously make new laws at the waive of their wands.
Gun rights orgs like Gun Owners of America, the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation and others have been loading their legal weaponry in anticipation of the battle. Here’s wishing them luck.
Are today’s moves good politically in the run-up to the November election? The big brains at the White House apparently think so. Along with the economy, crime is one of the biggest concerns on the minds of most Americans. Yet gun control has lost popularity in the last two years as people have been buying firearms in record numbers. And as polling shows, Americans don’t trust Democrats to do anything meaningful about “gun violence” — or any other kind of crime, for that matter.
So will the fearmongering campaign about the alleged threat that “ghost guns” pose to law and order mean that today’s announcements will move the electoral needle enough to lessen the anticipated damage anti-gun Democrats — which includes pretty much all of them — will suffer at the polls in November? Don’t bet on it. It just gets the gibbering gibbons of the gun control industry off of the administration’s back. At least for now.
