Kash Patel Is Now Running the ATF—Will He Neuter It or Just Keep the Chair Warm?

Kash Patel has a golden opportunity to protect gun rights.

Kash Patel has been FBI Director for all of five minutes and now it appears he will already have a new job: Acting director of the Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

If President Donald Trump is serious about his promises to protect gun rights, this could be a welcome sign for those who support the Second Amendment, especially if he takes significant steps to curb the ATF’s anti-gun crusade that occurred under the Biden administration.

Justice Department officials familiar with the situation indicated that Patel is expected to be sworn in this week, according to The Washington Post.

It is unclear what President Donald Trump’s long-term plans are for ATF — a 5,000-person agency that is responsible for regulating the sales and licensing of firearms and whose agents often work with local law enforcement to solve gun crimes.

But for now, Patel will have the unusual responsibility of operating two large and consequential agencies that are part of the Justice Department. The people who spoke about his added role did so on the condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that had not yet been announced.

Patel’s appointment as acting ATF director could be a golden opportunity to rein in an agency that has spent decades trampling all over Americans’ Second Amendment rights. It has become a bureaucratic monstrosity, harassing law-abiding gun owners and being used to crack down on gun rights.

If I had it my way, Patel would take a series of actions to neuter the ATF as an anti-gun government apparatus.

For starters, he should immediately begin gutting the agency’s power. The ATF micromanages every gun and accessory in the United States. An internal audit to expose the agency’s waste and overreach is certainly in order. Think warrantless gun shop inspections and sting operations that turn law-abiding civilians into felons over technicalities.

Patel should make the findings of the audit public so everyone can see just how the ATF has been leveraged to impede the right to keep and bear arms. Then, the new acting director should push Congress to slash funding to the ATF. Better yet, why not place a moratorium on its shadiest practices, including undercover traps, onerous regulations targeting gun owners and sellers, and interpretations of the law that make it easier for the agency to violate the Second Amendment?

Next, Patel must take a Javier Milei-style chainsaw to the ATF’s unconstitutional rules and regulations. Torch the Biden-era pistol brace ban. This rule transformed regular law-abiding volks into overnight criminals for no valid reason.

Do the same for restrictions on “ghost guns,” which empower the ATF to go after people simply for building their own firearms. This rule allowed the ATF to assist the New York Police Department (NYPD) in targeting Brooklyn native Dexter Taylor, who was sentenced in 2024 to ten years in prison simply for manufacturing guns despite not having a criminal record.

Patel should order a legal review of every ATF regulation and do away with each one that even comes close to violating the U.S. Constitution. The agency should break its horrible habit of rewriting firearm definitions on a whim – as it did with the pistol brace ban. Perhaps he should mandate that no new classifications can be implemented without Congress signing off.

Patel should end the ATF practice of targeting gun sellers over silly little clerical mistakes on their paperwork. Under Biden, the agency shut down numerous firearms dealers for these simple mistakes. Even those who made small typos lost their licenses – which they should not have needed in the first place.

Lastly, Patel should seek to put himself out of a job. The reality is that even with reform, the ATF remains a corrupt and unconstitutional agency. There is no need to allow the ATF to stick around when it serves no purpose that couldn’t be fulfilled by another agency.

This idea has a high-level of support – at least from conservatives and libertarians who are tired of the federal government violating the Second Amendment. The ATF is nothing more than a relic of a government that fears an armed citizenry more than armed criminals. The only place the ATF should exist is in the annals of history.

If Kash Patel takes this job seriously, he won’t just tweak the ATF—he’ll break it. He has the opportunity to eliminate threats to our Second Amendment rights and leave a legacy of freedom. Anything less, and he’s just another suit warming a chair. Get to work, Kash. We’re watching.