Thomas Brandon, Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Thomas Brandon, the ATF’s Deputy Director, has been the agency’s Acting Director since 2015. The agency has been without a confirmed Director for nine out of the last 13 years. Now Brandon has announced his retirement as the end of this month.

TTAG hears other departures may be in the works for the agency as well. Here’s the AP’s report . . .

WASHINGTON (AP) — The top official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is leaving the job at month’s end.

An agency spokeswoman says Thomas Brandon will retire on April 30. He’s the ATF’s deputy director but has been leading the bureau since 2015.

Under Brandon’s leadership, the ATF investigated some of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings. The ATF also expanded a national network that photographs bullet casings to match that information against evidence collected at other crime scenes.

And the ATF has begun enforcing the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire like machine guns.

Brandon’s retirement comes weeks after he told Congress he was concerned a budget proposal would further strain the agency’s resources.

There’s no immediate word on who will replace Brandon.

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32 COMMENTS

        • That’s what I call unjust resentment. We didn’t declare a piece of plastic a machinegun & ban it by fiat. I, at least, never expected a NYer to be a friend to gun owners.

        • Hey barnbrt you ever meet the perfect person? I sure as the hell haven’t, and Trump isn’t perfect either, but d@m if he doesn’t get 19 of 20 things right. But lets keep hammering him about that 1 in 20 he messes up on. Right?

          I don’t like the bump stock ban, but there’s a bigger picture out there. What Trump has done to curb China alone makes him a successful president, who’s at least as (maybe more) conservative than Reagan (which by the way makes him the most conservative president in what a hundred years?) He has done more to monkey wrench the NWO than I thought any one man could. But yeah, it’s really all about bump stocks.

          ATF Acting Director Thomas Brandon Announces Retirement and where do you go? Right to Trump. So…

          Someone that focuses on that 1 in 20 and ignores the bigger picture IS a miserable S.O.B.

      • Bar is a somnof a bitch but he’s serving well through this Russian hoax. Trump managed to turn the tables on the dems and media pretty good. And just in time for elections
        Starting.

      • They are playing checkers. Trump is in a street fight. That’s why he’s winning

        • Guess those insta felon bumpstock owners are just chess pieces to him. I am not surprised by the Trump bumpstock ban. He has a long left wing history.

        • I question whether someone who is stupid enough to buy an idiotic device like a bumpstock is intelligent enough to possess firearms. Same goes for any gun owner who votes democrat.

  4. LOL …. he knows what’s coming — Total Fraud Exposure. There is so much ‘ slight of hand ‘ used to make B.A.T.F. seem legit , it’s staggering.

    From ; BATF Criminal Fraud Research by Dan Meador & Bill Cooper.

    ” Walker created the [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms] from the [Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division] of Humphrey’s [Internal Revenue Service]. He then says, that, what was transferred, is the same ENTITY as the [Commissioner of Internal Revenue]. He KNEW he could not create something from nothing without the AUTHORITY OF CONGRESS and/or the President, so he made it look like he did something that he had, in fact, not done. TO COMPOUND THE FRAUD, the FEDERAL REGISTER PUBLISHED the unbelievable assertion that a PERSON HAD BEEN REPLACED WITH A THING; ” the term Director Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division has been replaced with the term Internal Revenue Service.”

    You wont read this in any N.R.A. publication , I can assure you that.
    http://usa-the-republic.com/revenue/BATF-IRS%20Criminal%20Report.html#tgotm

  7. 1 less useless bureaucrat on the payroll. Dont let the door hit you on the way out where the sun dont shine.

  10. I think good choices would be :

    1. Ted Nugent
    2. Wayne lapeiere
    3. Marty Daniel
    4. Donald Trump Jr
    5. Chris Cox
    6. Alex Jones

    • Miranda Lambert. Her confirmation hearings would be a pure delight. U don’t mess with Texas. F-K-A.

  12. “I President Trump” appoint Maj Toure from Black Guns Matter to be the next director of the BATFE.

    My dream.

  13. John Ross for Director of BATFE

    This is the appointment we need. Has has said he would do it without pay.

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