The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Steven Dettelbach joined CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan to talk about violent crime committed with firearms and the tools he wants from Congress. The problem is those requests have already been rejected by Congress for good reason. Those tools would violate federal law and would chip away at the rights of those who obey the law without actually addressing the problem of crime.
“I was in Baltimore a few weeks ago with the law enforcement there, and it’s like, almost a 20 percent drop in homicides, but looks to me the caveat is that for many years in this country, we’ve had a very serious gun crime problem,” Director Dettelbach explained. “And we are the outlier among almost all Western modern nations, and not the outlier in a good way.”
He added later, “Well, I look at- look, I mean, data doesn’t lie.”
Juxtapose that with Director Dettelbach repeating the verifiably false claim that firearms are the leading cause of death among children. That’s just not true.
False Narrative
“The leading cause of death of children in the United States is firearms violence, right,” Director Dettelbach said. “Not cancer, not cars. Guns.”
That’s patently false. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris like to trot out the line in their gun control speeches even though it’s been proven to be false. The Washington Post, hardly a firearm-friendly news agency, admitted the narrative is false. To make the claim, The White House and now Director Dettelbach include people age 18 and 19. The problem is, 18 and 19-year-olds are adults, not children.
“When you focus only on children — 17 and younger — motor vehicle deaths (broadly defined) still rank No. 1, as they have for six decades,” The Washington Post reported. “In the interest of accuracy, it would be better for White House officials to refer to children and teens when citing these reports. When all motor vehicle accidents are counted, then motor vehicle deaths continue to exceed firearm deaths for children — defined as people under age 18 — whether or not infants are included.”
NSSF has blasted this twisting of data to arrive at the heated talking point. The claim in question came about as a result of a faulty study published by the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention in April 2022. That study included Americans aged 18 and 19 years old – adults – in the data set as well as manipulated motor vehicle crash data to assert firearms became the “leading cause of death among children and adolescents” in 2020. NSSF debunked the study when it was published in April 2022.
Like Director Dettelbach said in his Face the Nation interview: data doesn’t lie.
Differing Ideas
Director Dettelbach lamented that the debate over firearms has become too heated. He recalled a meeting he had with residents of Lewiston, Maine, following the tragic criminal attack on innocent Americans there. He admitted that some in attendance, who were families of victims and victims themselves, were deeply suspicious of heavy-handed government intrusion on their rights.
“Those people were able to sit in that room with all that grief and have a discussion,” Director Dettelbach explained. “Tell me what they – what they – their feelings, differing feelings about how we should approach this problem. And they all had ideas.”
There are differing ideas. That’s why NSSF partners with the ATF to prevent the illegal straw purchasing of firearms in the “Don’t Lie for the Other GuyT” campaign, of which he spoke. NSSF also partners with ATF for Operation Secure Store to help firearm retailers improve security at their stores. However, there are some ideas that are just unacceptable.
Director Dettelbach bemoaned that Congress refuses to give him the authority to implement universal background checks. In fact, Congress has roundly rejected that idea because the Department of Justice (DoJ) admitted that for universal background checks to work, every law-abiding gun owner would need to be placed on a national firearm registry. That’s forbidden by federal law.
“So again, really, you know, people ask me, what’s my top priority? What’s my- what’s my wish list? I think the reality is it’s going to be a lot of things that we have to do to get out of this situation to make things better,” Director Dettelbach said. “… if Congress wants to consider more on universal background checks…”
Here’s why Congress isn’t giving in on surrendering the rights of law-abiding citizens to the government. It’s a false sense of security that would trade the rights of those who obey the law for an unkept promise to go after those who break the law. Congress is the representative government of “We, the People…” The “People” have been given every reason to distrust the government when it comes to protecting their Second Amendment rights.
Untrustworthy Track Record
Just weeks ago, the U.S. Treasury Department admitted that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) violated the private banking and financial records of Americans to create a government watchlist that included anyone who bought a gun, ammunition – even a Bible – or shopped at one of several big box sporting goods stores.
The Biden administration’s Commerce Department has been working to throttle firearm exports in an attempt to kneecap U.S. firearm manufacturers. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued a “90-day pause” that’s well beyond the initial 90 days to halt nearly all firearm exports while the administration re-examines policy. That’s despite the strongest safeguards that have been in place ever. The United States sets the leading standard in the world for firearm exports. All firearm and ammunition exports are – and always were – subject to both Defense and State Department review, and either can halt the export if there are security or human rights concerns. Firearm and ammunition license applications undergo a 100 percent end-user check by the BIS Office of Export Enforcement (OEE), regardless of how long an exporting company has been doing business with that customer, regardless of how many times the buyer was subjected to an end-user check and regardless of whether BIS has no derogatory information on that customer, even if the end-user was recently approved. At present, no other commodity is subject to the same 100 percent check.
There are more reasons why Congress is suspect of handing the reins over to the Biden administration when it comes to Americans’ Second Amendment rights. ATF itself has shown a willingness to infringe on Second Amendment rights through the rule-making process. ATF wrote a proposed “engaged-in-the-business” rule that would require nearly all private firearm sellers to obtain a federal firearms license and run background checks. Congress made a one-word change to the definition of “engaged-in-the-business” in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA). ATF used that to launch 108 pages to require an estimated 328,000 additional licensees. It’s not just unconstitutional. It’s unfeasible.
The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is demanding answers from Director Dettelbach, noting that the BSCA said the revised “engaged-in-the-business” definition “shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”
ATF also published a Final Rule redefining “frames or receivers” in an effort to outlaw the ability for law-abiding private citizens to make their own firearms in their own home for private use. That was legal even before the founding of the nation. That rule is being challenged in courts for exceeding the authority of ATF to set criminal code, which is the sole authority of Congress. It is likely to be petitioned to the U.S. Supreme Court.
There’s also the recently-challenged Final Rule banning bump stocks, which was just heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. That challenge also questioned ATF’s authority to write criminal law. A decision is expected later this year.
There are more examples of why Congress – and the American public – distrust the federal government when it comes to their Second Amendment rights, including the Obama-Biden administration’s abusive Operation Choke Point, the ill-fated ATF Fast and Furious, California’s “accidental” release of concealed carry permit holders’ information to the general public and the same instance of New York City releasing concealed carry permit holders’ information to the media.
Data – and history – don’t lie.
—Mark Oliva, for NSSF
Rabid desperation…….that pesky 2nd is the ONLY thing stopping them from carrying out their ultimate goal!
Actually the stopping power rests in the hands and the will of Patriots, as during the time of our Founders. They had no Second Amendment. they only had their belief in freedom, and insurrection against an overbearing tyrannical government. Insurrection is noted as though it were a bad thing. Fortunately, our Founders held a different perspective of the concept. They penned the Second to document that right, not granting the right to keep and bear, but to tell the government that the right shall not be infringed by government. The Founders had not just returned from deer season when they penned the Second.
We’ve got enough guns…did that just come from my fingers….hoard ammo. It’s going to be a target rich environment.
Hmmm…
Thousands of military aged men and foreign criminals being dispersed across the country, military aged Chinese filmed target shooting in Idaho, yet the militarized administration that apparently wants me dead also wants me disarmed! I don’t think so!
How awful, some young men in Idaho were filmed shooting guns at targets? That’s *definitely* both noteworthy and concerning
/SARC
Thats a funny name that fella has. I think about it every time I hear. Makes me think tweedle dee or Deeter Deeter. Or Deeterbacle as in debacle.
I heard Beetlebug but that’s just me🙄. This kind of unelected bureaucrat wields immense power over POTG. Unless we resist…
Dettlebach is the penultimate bureaucrat. If he wasn’t running the BATF he would be running a bicycle inspection and licensing section of a small town city hall.
Tweedle dee dee or tweedle dee dumb.
That’s an Amish name, isn’t it?
What a shame! the Amish are usually staunch second amendment supporters.
Data doesn’t lie but liars use data. Manipulated, cherry-picked, pushed, filtered, obfuscated, etc… It’s all data used to shape the shadows we see on the cave wall.
Numbers, like people, will confess to anything if tortured enough.
What? Our government is lying to us? Surely the ATF that is only enforcing the law as written by Congress wouldn’t lie to us! After all, they never murdered unarmed women and children nor shot a woman dead for the crime of holding her infant child in her arms!
The government is too big, too intrusive, and violates the rights of citizens every minute of every day. It needs to be reduced in size, and reduced in power. It is my hope that Trump will start the process and it seems likely we will find out after he replaces the massive failure currently occupying the White House.
Amen brother
Must be news to those Latin American countries with much higher gun death rates that they aren’t Western and modern.
They are not short on “commonsense” gun laws, tho.
To democrats anyone not white is and always will be a developing third worlder. Even those here in the states.
I use Doodlebug.
Answer? Vote for TRUMP 2024.
“The consensus is that no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well-supplied with ammunition.”
I contend that deaths by gun fire are not totally bad. For once I agree with Bill O’Reilly. Bad guys shooting people is the price of freedom. Liberty is risky business. That’s why our Founding Fathers recognized our God-given right to shoot back. Note the Founders did not denote Gun Free Zones…aka Fish-in-a-Barrel Zones.
The three tenets of KEEP. Keep packin’, keep practiced, keep vigilant.
Keep your enemy well supplied with ammo as he uses it against a shared enemy. But, always keep much more in your own armory.
“Nothing wrong with shooting as long as the right people get shot.” – Inspector Harry Callahan
We have sent 75 million pounds of gunpowder to Ukraine for 155mm alone…get that ammo food group taken care of now…there’s a worldwide shortage estimated to last 40 months AFTER the wars end.
Yep. Shortage of propellant powder for reloading has me re-evaluating my ammunition usage for this competition year. I have to factor in my son’s shooting and he has priority with the .223 reloads. This means I have to use what I have on hand for my competition. So I’m using 20+ year old reloads in .303, Turkish 8mm, and whatever .308 I can find.
His “wish list” is to eliminate the 2nd Amendment altogether, and then forcibly confiscate guns from every American, and it if means bringing in the UN or Chinese troops to shoot all of us in the process, so be it.
Correction. Dettlebach’s “wish list” is whatever his political masters want. His lords and masters want the complete annulment of the 2A, the removal of all private firearms, and the elimination of all law-abiding firearm owners.
Criminals can be co-opted into being “community enforcers” and the ones doing the actual elimination until their usefulness has ended.
Alchol causes drunks, drunks drive cars, ban cars.
Tobacco causes cancer, mostly lung cancer, ban lungs.
I tell yah, this BATFE just ain’t doing their job, can’t theBiden do something?
America has a crime problem, nothing to do with gunms. Dope, poverty, laziness, and envy.
I think more illegal immigrants is the fix, I mean look what they’ve done for the country they come from, I’ve no idea why they would want to leave?
Ya know, I might b able o muser up a whole lo more trust and confidence in BATF if it were nott for some of their specific antics of lae.
Start with Fast and Furious, the programme to promote illegal straw purchases by often non-citizens here, to feed the guns so purchased across the boundary into Méjico to arm the drug cartels. BATF pushed thism even to the point at times of criminally prosecuting honest ATF dealers for refusing to make obviously prohibited transfers. family in NM had their business (gun store) and home taken from them for refusing to cooperate and sell to obvously prohibited persons
BATF also did nothing significant when it was discovered an agent of some sort was caught systematically trafifcking guns across the border into Tijuana MX He used his position as a US Government agent as his cover. He skated, guns walked. Laws were broken, no consequences BATF “in charge”
BAF’s head honcho is now browbeating the Congress to do what we constantly tell them NOT to do….. they impose rules that were not enacted by the Congress, demand they enact more, etc. As perfidious an entity as ever slithered across this planet.
Well spoken
C’Mon man you don’t need a Gun…
⁷https://youtube.com/watch?v=b-7A6s6KN2w&feature=shared
try again…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=b-7A6s6KN2w&feature=shared
FROM MY COLD DEAD HAND!
Not.
->From Their Cold Dead Hands.<-
They are not going down without a fight but they Are going down.
possum, YOU BET YOUR ASS!
2nd attempt to post in 3 days
The Far Right never can see the forest for the trees. If the children deaths wer 1,650 and traffic deaths were 1,651 they would crow that firearms deaths are 1 less.
In 2019 firearm’s deaths were the highest on record at 2,590.
Firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among U.S. children and teens following a huge decadelong rise.
Analyses published on Oct. 5, 2023, by a research team in Boston found an 87% increase in firearm-involved fatalities among Americans under the age of 18 from 2011 to 2021.
Such an increase is obviously very concerning. But as scholars of adolescent health and firearm violence, we know there are many evidence-based steps that elected officials, health care professionals, community leaders, school administrators and parents can implement to help reverse this trend.
Trends in firearm deaths
The latest study is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This data also provides information on whether firearm deaths were the result of homicide, suicide or unintentional shootings.
We have seen increases over time in all three areas. The steepest increase has been in the rate of firearm homicides, which doubled over the decade to 2021, reaching 2.1 deaths per 100,000 children and teens, or about 1,500 fatalities annually. Firearm-involved suicides have also increased steadily to 1.1 deaths per 100,000 children and teens in 2021.
Whereas the proportion of youth firearm-involved deaths due to unintentional shootings is typically highest during childhood, the share of gun deaths due to suicide peaks in adolescence.
In 2021, homicide was the most common form of firearm-involved deaths in almost every age group under the age of 18, with an exception of 12- and 13-year-olds, in which suicide was the leading cause of firearm fatalities.
Racial disparities in firearm deaths, which have been present for multiple generations, are also expanding, research shows.
Black children and teens are now dying from firearms at around 4.5 times the rate of their white peers.
This disparity is the consequence of structural factors, including the effects of systemic racism and economic disinvestment within many communities. Addressing racial disparities in firearm-involved deaths will require supporting communities and disrupting inequity by addressing long-term underfunding in Black communities and punitive policymaking.
Gun deaths among U.S. children and teens rose 50% in two years
BY JOHN GRAMLICH
The number of children and teens killed by gunfire in the United States increased 50% between 2019 and 2021, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the latest annual mortality statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, there were 1,732 gun deaths among U.S. children and teens under the age of 18. By 2021, that figure had increased to 2,590.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-among-us-kids-rose-50-percent-in-two-years/
DUNDERHEAD, again, with the hoplophobic propaganda. You make WILD ASS ASSUMPTIONS about what “Far Right Wing” people would say. Anything said by the CDC would be wildly suspect as they are a fount of anti-gun propaganda for years. Most of those deaths that were NOT suicides were as the RESULT OF CRIMES committed by criminals toting illegal firearms. For some unGodly reason you can’t seem to grasp this fact.
If you Leftist hoplophobes really want to do something about the “gun violence”(sic) problem, do something about your criminals friends and put them in jail while you take the dangerously mentally ill in mental facilities. You Leftist hoplophobes created this problem; the solutions are as clear as the nose on your face.
Was his wig made from humanely farmed mink?
OK so the guy made a boo=-boo Big deal, BUT from where I sit in the UK that the deaths of children by firear misuse or by intent in the same BREATH as death from Automobile accidents is surely the cause of some concern. Yet here we are and the GUN LOONS are arguing the point as to which of the two cause the MOST DEATHS as if it has any relevence at all about the overall picture,. Talk about bloody Nit picking!¬!
Am I therefore correct in supposing that IF this guy had got it all RIGHT it would have been acceptable and OK?
No. You’ve never been correct. About anything.
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