The Washington Times’ Jeff Mordock thinks so. I don’t.

EXCLUSIVE: ATF beleaguered by crisis in age of mass shootings
An epidemic of mass shootings has put a spotlight on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, revealing an agency that is understaffed, underfunded and treated as a political punching bag on both the right and the left.
[…]
“If they are really concerned, Congress would give ATF the resources to prevent and respond to mass shootings, but ATF is a political football,” [Kenneth E. Melson, former acting ATF director] said.

Bull. Even accepting the existence of the ATF, it is over-staffed for its “mission.”

In regards to firearms, the ATF has two jobs, neither of which it performs very well.

• Regulation of National Firearms Act (NFA) items
• Regulation of commercial manufacturing and sales

Because they have the manufacturing/sales data, they got tasked with assisting traces as an additional duty.

That’s it. Everything else it sticks it nose in is bureaucratic power grabs, empire building, in order to justify more people and bigger budgets.

As to the first — NFA — it shouldn’t be doing much of that, if any, at all. See MILLER, which held that militarily useful firearms are protected by the Second Amendment and may not be regulated under the NFA.

And it doesn’t even do that well. ATF agents have been forced to admit in court that, when investigating seemingly unregistered NFA items, over 40% of the time the discrepancy is actually in the ATF’s registry.

The second may be partially justifiable rationalizeable under “interstate commerce,” but just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it… especially poorly.

Tracing could be done by the FBI — which does have a criminal investigation role (constitutionality of that is a separate topic of discussion) simply by giving the FBI logins to the ATF manufacturing/sales databases, thus eliminating a layer of bureaucratic blockages and delays in investigations. Ditto for the ATF recovering firearms from prohibited persons who mistakenly complete purchases from FFLs. The FBI runs NICS; they could more simply and quickly do the recovery themselves (or, rather, inform local LE).

There happen to be excellent reasons for the multiple attempts to shift ATF duties to the FBI (which the FBI has resisted because it would mean getting stuck with a stable of incompetent ATF agents).

The ATF does not investigate murder, mass or otherwise, unless an NFA item was involved. State/local law enforcement and the FBI do that. At best, the ATF gets called in as advisors for its alleged firearms expertise… unless it’s something like Mandalay Bay where they were not even allowed to examine firearm internals.

“Expertise?” See the bizarre reinterpretation of reality that makes bump stocks — inert plastic and metal — into machineguns. Not to mention rubber bands. Wait? Did I mention their inability to make up their minds whether shoelaces are machineguns? The Technical Branch jury is out on belt loops as of this writing.

Expertise? Open bolt semi-autos were semi-auto. Until they weren’t. Unless they were manufactured before an arbitrary date, in which case they aren’t. Until they are.

Expertise? Look at the current rifle receiver fiasco. Rather than work with the obvious — AR receivers simply happen to be in two major subassemblies — they classified one inoperative subassembly as a firearm. Two federal courts have noted that the ATF’s WTF classification conflicts with statutory law, prompting the dropping of charges in a major case lest the courts get a chance to slap the AT F-ups down for sheer stupidity.

The ATF is understaffed and underfunded only in the sense that the Keystone Kops were. I really don’t think we need to fund incompetent rights violations.

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited, and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]