What DOGE Should Do To The ATF

If Joe Biden had gotten his way, the firearms manufacturers he called "the enemy" would have been reduced to only serving the government, gun stores would have been regulated into extinction and the "Necessary and Proper Clause" in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution would have been expanded (or overlooked) to give the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) the power to rewrite gun-control laws.

These attempts to use the federal bureaucracy against we the people are out of step with our national character, are unconstitutional and are wildly counterproductive. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a presidential advisory commission announced by President Donald Trump (R), should put the ATF on its long list of out-of-control bureaucracies that need to be trimmed and taken out of politics.

Here are some things that Elon Musk, DOGE's chief advisor to the president, could recommend in order to refocus the ATF on its actual mission.

First, they could advise President Trump to sign an executive action stating that the ATF cannot attempt to rewrite gun-control law. The U.S. Constitution empowers Congress with writing the law. The courts then are supposed to keep the executive, legislative and all of the government's agencies within the bounds of the law—beginning with the constraints stipulated by the Constitution. Doing this would prevent the ATF from wasting its time and resources on things it does not have the authority to do. .....