The Justice Department plans to slash the number of inspectors who monitor federally licensed gun dealers by two-thirds, sharply limiting the government’s already crimped capacity to identify businesses that sell guns to criminals, according to budget documents.
The move, part of the Trump administration’s effort to defang and downsize the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, comes as the department considers merging the A.T.F. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It follows a rollback of Biden-era regulations aimed at stemming the spread of deadly homemade firearms, along with other gun control measures.
The department plans to eliminate 541 of the estimated 800 investigators responsible for determining whether federal dealers are following federal law and regulations intended to keep guns away from traffickers, straw purchasers, criminals and those found to have severe mental illness, according to a budget summary quietly circulated last week.
Department officials estimated the reductions would reduce “A.T.F.’s capacity to regulate the firearms and explosives industries by approximately 40 percent” in the fiscal year starting in November — even though the staff cuts represent two-thirds of the inspection work force. The cuts are needed to meet the White House demand that A.T.F. cut nearly a third from its budget of $1.6 billion.
News of the plan came as a shock to a work force already reeling from months of disruption. Several frontline agency staff members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said the cuts would lead to hundreds of layoffs and effectively end the A.T.F.’s role as a serious regulator of gun sales, if they are not reversed by the White House or Congress.
“These are devastating cuts to law enforcement funding and would undermine A.T.F.’s ability to keep communities safe from gun violence,” said John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group founded by the former mayor of New York Michael R. Bloomberg. “This budget would be a win for unscrupulous gun dealers and a terrible setback for A.T.F.’s state and local law enforcement partners.”
The inspection program is already woefully understaffed: A small percentage of the 100,000 or so dealers, collectors and manufacturers monitored by the A.T.F. are inspected in any given year — and some licensees can go nearly a decade without facing routine regulatory scrutiny. The inspections have, nonetheless, become a target of Republicans, who view them as an intrusion into gun rights.
But A.T.F. officials, law enforcement groups and gun control activists see such routine monitoring as a fundamental safeguard against abuses that have led some retail outlets to become sources for criminals and straw purchasers paid to buy guns.
A spokesman for the Justice Department had no comment.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has already rolled back a range of Biden-era gun control measures, including a crackdown on federally licensed gun dealers who falsify business records and skip customer background checks.
She also directed the A.T.F. to review two other major policies enacted under the Biden administration, with an eye toward scrapping both. One is a ban on so-called pistol braces, which are used to convert handguns into rifle-like weapons, and the second is a rule requiring background checks on private gun sales.
The bureau, responsible for enforcing gun laws and regulating firearms dealers, enjoyed a brief revival during the Biden administration. It led a four-year push to expand background checks on buyers, crack down on untraceable homemade weapons known as “ghost guns” and curtail the use of devices that convert standard weapons into machine guns.
Those days are long gone.
The A.T.F., a division of the Justice Department, has been ravaged by the departure of key career personnel and the diversion of dozens of agents from core duties to immigration enforcement — leaving it rudderless, demoralized and leaderless.
In April, the A.T.F.’s roughly 10,000 employees were handed off from one caretaker, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, to another, Daniel Driscoll, the Army secretary.
Mr. Driscoll had been told he was being given the assignment a few days before, and was not happy with it, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss the matter.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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