Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Identification: Federal agency that enforces federal laws involving firearms, moonshine liquor, untaxed cigarettes, and explosives

Date: Established as the Alcohol Prohibition Unit in 1919

Significance: Originally created to enforce the federal prohibition on alcohol, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has undergone many changes during its history and is now the main federal agency responsible for the enforcement of gun-control laws. It has many other responsibilities, but its involvement in the enforcement of gun laws has made it one of the most controversial federal law-enforcement agencies.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began in 1919 as the Alcohol Prohibition Unit in the Bureau of Internal Revenue (which later became the Internal Revenue Service). It was soon moved to the Department of Justice and was renamed the Bureau of Prohibition. Under that name, it enforced federal laws against the consumption or manufacture of alcohol. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the bureau was returned to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Internal Revenue. At first called the Alcohol Tax Unit, it was renamed the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD).

Federal laws required that alcohol producers and tobacco sellers pay special excise taxes. Some citizens, particularly in the South, produced "moonshine" liquor without paying the necessary taxes and sold their homemade liquor in states or localities where alcohol was illegal. Through the 1960s the ATTD’s main law-enforcement responsibility was pursuit of illegal liquor stills, especially in southeastern states. The ATTD also regulated the lawful commerce of alcohol, acting as the administrative agency to enforce alcohol production and sales by legitimate companies, pursuant to the federal Alcohol Administration Act of 1935.

The US Constitution does not explicitly grant the federal government any law-enforcement powers except in a few discrete areas, such as piracy and counterfeiting. That is why it was necessary to add the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1919 to empower the federal government to enforce prohibition. In 1934, when Congress wanted to impose federal controls on the possession of machine guns, it used its taxing power. The National Firearms Act that Congress passed that same year required that owners of machine guns—and certain other firearms—pay a federal tax and register their guns with the federal government. The latter requirement was ostensibly enacted for tax purposes but was actually a method by which the federal government gave itself control over firearms ownership. The ATTD was given responsibility for enforcing this new tax law.

Expanding Jurisdiction

As national crime rates rose during the 1960s Congress passed new federal crime laws. The US Supreme Court’s increasingly expansive interpretations of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce provided the basis for new laws enacted on the theory that local crime affects interstate commerce. In 1968, Congress passed the Gun Control Act, which provided detailed regulations for the retail sale of firearms and prohibited large classes of people from buying guns. The following year, the ATTD was renamed the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division (ATFD) and given responsibility for enforcing the gun control policies under the new act.

In 1970 Congress passed the Explosives Control Act. The ATFD and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shared responsibility for enforcing this law’s criminal law provisions, but the ATFD took sole responsibility for regulating the lawful production and sale of explosives. Two years later, the ATFD was removed from the Internal Revenue Service. Renamed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), it became an autonomous law-enforcement agency within the Treasury Department, along with that department’s Secret Service and Bureau of Customs.

Gun Enforcement Controversy

The ATF’s enforcement of the new gun laws was controversial from the start. Many gun owners—as well as groups such as the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and Second Amendment Foundation—contended that ATF tactics were unconstitutional and illegitimate. They claimed that the agency often seized guns and refused to return them, even when there was no legal basis for doing so. Critics of the agency also charged that ATF agents entrapped many innocent people into committing technical violations of federal laws and that the agency frequently abused its search and seizure powers.

The ATF denied the charges, but a unanimous 1982 report of the US Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution provided a scathing denunciation of ATF tactics. In 1986 Congress passed the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act (FOPA) by large margins in both the House and the Senate. This new law significantly revised the Gun Control Act of 1968, provided more precise definitions of what was covered by federal law, reduced some technical violations of gun laws to misdemeanors, and set limits on the ATF’s search and seizure powers.

Expanding Operations

In 1975, the ATF began to take on arson cases under the theory that the accelerants used by arsonists constituted explosives. Later, the federal explosives law was amended to encompass arson, thus making ATF’s jurisdiction over arson more legally secure.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the federal war on drugs became a major national issue, the ATF created "Special Response Teams" to conduct violent and high-profile raids into homes that ATF alleged were occupied by drug dealers in possession of illegal firearms. During that period, the bureau began styling itself as "ATF," rather than "BATF," to mimic the three-letter acronyms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

The bureau’s image was significantly tarnished by a congressional investigation of the case of Randy Weaver. Weaver and his family were white separatists who lived in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. In 1989, an informant working for an ATF agent entrapped Randy Weaver into selling him two shotguns (a legal act) and then sawing off their barrels to shorten them (an illegal act). The case eventually led to an FBI siege of Weaver’s cabin in 1992 and the fatal shooting of Weaver’s wife in what became known as the Ruby Ridge shoot-out. Weaver himself was tried and acquitted for the original firearms sale charge in 1993. Another controversy followed soon after. In early 1993 an ATF raid on the compound of the Branch Davidian religious cult outside Waco, Texas, went disastrously wrong. Four ATF agents and several civilians were killed, and the ATF’s decision-making about the so-called Waco siege was widely criticized.

The Waco and Weaver cases (which were both seen as motivations for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995), allegations of racial and sex discrimination within the ATF, and other serious management problems, appeared to put the bureau’s existence in jeopardy, especially when committees in both houses of Congress held hearings to investigate the bureau in 1995. However, the bureau survived, and afterward avoided major negative publicity. The bureau continues to be criticized by gun-rights groups for its unduly severe enforcement of federal gun laws, while simultaneously receiving criticism from anti-gun groups for excessive timidity in its enforcement of the same laws.

Reorganization

As part of a federal law-enforcement reorganization following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the ATF was renamed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and was transferred from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department—where, ironically, its Prohibition ancestor had been transferred decades before. Despite its name change, the bureau retained “ATF” as its official acronym.

In 2004 Congress enacted legislation that restricted the release—except for law-enforcement purposes—of ATF records identifying lawful gun buyers. The new law also restricted the release of the "trace" records used by the ATF to track the sale and ownership of individual firearms. Requests for such information are usually made by local law-enforcement agencies that find guns that may have been used in crimes or guns that have been stolen. Supporters of the new federal legislation argued that law-abiding gun owners, as well as nonowners who may be mentioned in trace reports—such as witnesses to crimes—should have their privacy rights protected. Critics responded that the law interfered with the ability of the public to learn important information about gun ownership and gun-law enforcement.

Bibliography

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF, US Dept. of Justice, 2016. Web. 25 May. 2016.

Hardy, David. The B.A.T.F.’s War on Civil Liberties. Bellevue, Wash.: Second Amendment Foundation, 1979. Print.

Holmes, Bill. Entrapment: The BATF in Action. El Dorado, Ark.: Desert Publications, 1998. Print.

Moore, James A. Very Special Agents: The Inside Story of America’s Most Controversial Law Enforcement Agency—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Print.

United States Government. Twenty-first Century Guide to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Washington, D.C.: Progressive Management, 2002. Compact disc.

Vizzard, William J. In the Cross Fire: A Political History of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1997. Print.