This month’s news that Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll had taken over as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was the latest in a string of unexpected developments at the agency. The turmoil has caused an exodus of senior-level employees and left remaining staff feeling discouraged and destabilized, current and former officials told The Trace.
Four assistant directors and the agency’s chief technology officer have left or announced plans to leave the agency in the past six months, according to the officials and a review of LinkedIn posts. At least two of these officials accepted deferred resignations offered in January by the Trump administration as part of an aggressive push to cull the federal workforce. More senior-level employees are expected to accept a second resignation offer issued more recently, the officials said.
“Everybody I’ve talked with is just waiting for the shoe to drop and hear that they’re being cut or that the agency is being downsized,” said one senior official who, like other current employees, spoke with The Trace on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “I’ve never seen a work environment like this. Morale is abysmal.”
— Champe Barton in Another ATF Leadership Shakeup, an Employee Exodus, and Low Morale
Couldn’t happen to a sorrier agency that needs to go away in it’s entirety.
” ‘I’ve never seen a work environment like this. Morale is abysmal.’ ”
Awww poor wittle baby…. but lets put this in context: Nice salary and benefits, coupled with power to infringe 2A rights and impose tyranny, and even ‘murder’ with the protection of ‘qualified immunity’ based on ‘rules’ the ATF created to impose tyranny as unconstitutional ‘defacto law’ ’cause we say so’ to worship a left wing tyrant called Biden waging, basically, a ‘war on the constitution’ and weaponizing the ATF against innocent American citizens….
Yeah, American citizens has “never seen a work environment” specifically geared towards tyranny since we kicked the British out of here many years ago. And if you think your moral is ‘abysmal’ now then count your self lucky because had that ‘work environment’ continued the victims of your tyranny in large sized force would have been ‘culling’ your numbers ballistically when you showed up trying to enforce your BS ’cause we said so’ rules and that would have really made your morale ‘abysmal’. Yeah, it was coming to that point, where the 2A purpose of throwing off the yoke of your tyranny was being reached.
So really, I don’t care to hear your whining about your BS.
Declassified Document: Biden-Harris Administration Targeted Gun Owners & 2A Rights Under “Domestic Terrorism” Pretext.
https://www.ammoland.com/2025/04/declassified-document-biden-harris-administration-targeted-gun-owners-2a-rights-under-domestic-terrorism-pretext/
Eliminate the agency all together, and just be done with it.
Let’s hope Jeffrey Bodell is one of them.
“Morale is abysmal.”
Oh how the turn tables.
Also from Barton’s article:
“The ATF announced April 7 that it was ending its zero-tolerance policy for gun dealers, a Biden administration measure requiring stricter penalties when dealers commit serious violations of federal gun laws. Gun industry interest groups and many ATF agents had argued that the policy unfairly targeted dealers who posed little threat to public safety.”
“‘The ATF announced April 7 that it was ending its zero-tolerance policy for gun dealers, a Biden administration measure requiring stricter penalties when dealers commit serious violations of federal gun laws.'”
And as usual The Trace article was deceptively biased. The Biden “zero-tolerance policy” was not a “measure requiring stricter penalties when dealers commit serious violations of federal gun laws.”
It was a measure aimed at shutting down gun dealers for even the smallest clerical mistakes, such as spelling errors or mis-shapen characters or putting an item of information on the wrong line – easily resolvable common human-error clerical mistakes made millions of times daily across the world by millions of people, but for gun dealers until this policy were corrected with the help and blessing of the ATF. There was no ‘serious’ violation of federal law in those. The way the Trace puts it doesn’t tell the reality of its use and purpose and makes it sound like these human-error clerical mistake people were hardened criminals out to intentionally commit serious crimes or were criminals but not a threat to public safety. And sure, maybe the policy did catch some more serious types of offense, but that wasn’t really the purpose of it overall as it was part of Bidens declared war on the 2A and constitution.
Then the Trace article puts it like this: “Gun industry interest groups and many ATF agents had argued that the policy unfairly targeted dealers who posed little threat to public safety.”
There was no threat to public safety at all from the human-error clerical mistakes. But the Trace can’t say that, they write it as though there was still a crime just not a serious crime when in reality the Biden “zero-tolerance policy” was a Biden permission for the ATF to simply make it a ‘serious’ crime by ’cause we say so’ self-reinterpretation where no such crime existed in federal law created by congress intended to be applied to these human-error clerical mistakes. Another case of the ATF creating ‘defacto law’ and Biden usurping the authority of congress. And that is what “Gun industry interest groups and [some] ATF agents” argued against and not that “the policy unfairly targeted dealers who posed little threat to public safety”
Imagine for a second …. if you filled out your government income tax forms to file taxes and your handwriting that day was a little sloppy and say your lowercase letter ‘a’ looked a little more like a lower case ‘o’ when you signed your name in cursive – and some government law enforcement agency showed up at your home with guns to take your home from you because of it. Were you a criminal and threat to public safety? That’s the type of thing this tyranny Biden decree, ATF enforced and created, zero-tolerance policy did to hundreds of innocent gun dealers for simple human-error clerical errors. And some of them had even received permission from ATF to fix the clerical error and the ATF still went after them when zero-tolerance started and treated them like criminals and acted as their judges and jury in taking their lively hood. But according to the Trace article portrayal of the policy – you were a criminal who either committed a serious crime or still a criminal who posed little threat to public safety.
The Trace article was deceptively biased. It does not follow objective ‘journalism’ standards and never makes clear the reality of the zero-tolerance policy, and makes these whiney ATF morons look like victims someway or another with their highlighting the whining about their ‘work environment’ now that their unconstitutional and unlawful actions for ‘zero tolerance’ tyranny has gone away.
Those in the ATF who argued against the zero-tolerance policy were not ‘many’ like The Trace article pretends. Those who did not follow along with the program were sidelined or gotten rid of by a choice of ‘quit or retire or get fired’.