New ATF Director Says Gun Owners No Longer Need to Fear Agency

Republicans on the House’s Federal Law Enforcement subcommittee on Thursday pressed the new head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Robert Cekada, on safeguarding gunowner data and implementing reforms to reverse alleged oversteps by the agency during the Biden Administration.Central to the hearing by the House Oversight subcommittee was violations of the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ATF from publicly disclosing firearms trace data and prohibits the creation of a federal gun registry.The subcommittee chairman, Congressman Clay Higgins, said he was concerned about what he called the ATF’s repeated dissemination of firearms trace data.Mr. Cekada told the committee that, in one publicized case, there was an inadvertent disclosure of the data when an attempted redaction was not carried out correctly because of a software issue. He says that the software has been upgraded to avoid the issue from happening again.Congressman Michael Cloud asked if anyone was disciplined for that disclosure. Mr. Cekada replied that because an internal review determined it was an unintentional release, there was no punishment.Mr. Cekada said that under his leadership, there will be a zero tolerance for any willful release of private information. He noted that an ATF agent that leaked information involving the Charlie Kirk killing investigation has been recommended for termination. “We are not playing around with anyone that would follow a path of their own,” Mr. Cekada said.Mr. Cekada last month proposed more than 30 ATF rule reforms as his first action after he took over the agency. The goal is to reduce burdens on gun owners and firearms dealers, including ending inadvertent compliance issues for responsible owners and licensees.“The goal is to modernize the rules to provide clarity, to remove any ambiguity, and also to be in line with the law,” Mr. Cekada told the subcommittee.Democrats on the subcommittee claimed the rules were crafted to support the gun lobby and will make Americans less safe. Mr. Cekada said the gun industry was not involved in crafting the proposed rules, which are undergoing a 90 day public comment period.The ATF, formed more than 50 years ago, is a division of the Justice Department that investigates criminal possession of manufacture of firearms, bombing and arson attacks, and tax evasion involving alcohol and tobacco.Mr. Cekada says the ATF has ended the Biden-era “Zero Tolerance” policy which threatened the licenses of gun dealers who had violated an extensive list of rules. Critics of the rule said it was gun control overreach and targeted firearm businesses with closure over small paperwork and clerical errors.Mr. Cekada did mention one new program that had a Republican member of the subcommittee concerned. Mr. Cekada said that the bureau recently purchased access to an ad service that records geolocation data and IP addresses from mobile phones, but he said that agents have not started using the data yet as the agency formulates policies on how it would be used during investigations.Mr. Cekada said the data doesn’t identify anyone by name but gives information that can tie a phone to a specific location that could be useful as part of an investigation. “That opens a whole new can of worms that we’re going to have to get into at some point,” Congressman Michael Cloud said.

New ATF Director Says Gun Owners No Longer Need to Fear Agency

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