After a group of 14 anti-gun-rights Democrats sent a letter to President Donald Trump calling for the removal of Kash Patel as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a major national gun rights group is suggesting they “pound sand.”
Democrat House members Mike Thompson, Robin L. Kelly, Dan Goldman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Eric Swalwell, Mike Quigley, Grace Meng, Nikema Williams, Mark Pocan, Emanuel Cleaver, II, Gwen S. Moore, Jennifer L. McClellan, Haley M. Stevens and Rashida Tlaib signed the March 3 letter. Identifying themselves as “members of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force,” they intimated Patel, who now heads the FBI, is “an unqualified partisan” who will “oversee our federal gun violence prevention laws.”
The letter also complains that Patel is “someone without experience fighting crime.”
As noted by The Hill, the Democrats also said, “Since the Biden-era Safer Communities Act passed in a bipartisan manner in 2022, there has been a “historic reduction” in gun violence.”
However, responding to the letter, which was posted on social media, Alan Gottlieb at the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, fired back.
“Apparently,” Gottlieb said, “everybody who signed that letter slept through last year’s stunning revelation that the FBI’s initial report of a 1.7 percent decrease in violent crime from 2021 to 2022 was quietly adjusted to show a 4.5 percent increase. House Oversight Chair James Comer launched a probe of this revision last October.”
As reported last year by Julian Baron at The National News Desk, “The FBI quietly adjusted its annual crime data to show an increase in violent crime from 2021 to 2022. The agency previously claimed violent crime decreased from 2021 to 2022, touting ‘an estimated 1.7%’ decrease in violent crime between the two calendar years. The revised data, which was first identified by RealClearInvestigations, shows violent crime actually increased during that timeframe.”
At the same time, Fox News was quoting John Lott, founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, who stated, “For some reason, the media, they did pick the crime data that they think goes and makes the Democrats look as good as possible. And then even when the crime data that they’ve relied on turns out by the very source of that data to be wrong, none of them fix it.”
There was no small irony in the fact that Patel, as the FBI chief, appears to be a crime fighter extraordinaire, as the agency just rounded up the third fugitive on the “Ten Most Wanted” list since Donald Trump took office Jan. 20. FBI agents arrested Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales on March 18.
Patel wrote on “X,” that this is the result of having a president whose priority is being tough on criminals.
“When you let good cops be good cops, this is what happens,” Patel wrote. “This administration is giving the new FBI and AG Bondi the resources to get the job done — and we won’t stop.”
The FBI and @TheJusticeDept @AGPamBondi have captured our third fugitive on the Ten Most Wanted list since January 20, 2025.
That’s not an accident.
When you let good cops be good cops, this is what happens.
This administration is giving the new FBI and AG Bondi the resources…
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) March 19, 2025
So much for the claim Patel is someone without experience fighting crime.
All of this comes as veteran anti-gun Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Senate minority leader, is under attack by his own party for not being tough enough on Trump. According to Politico, Schumer is facing an onslaught of criticism from liberal youth groups, along with jabs from his own party on Capitol Hill. Politico said a letter to Schumer from the Sunrise Movement, College Democrats of America, United We Dream Action and Voters of Tomorrow demanded that he “Obstruct the MAGA agenda with every tool you have.”
The party, which traditionally conducts its in-fighting behind closed doors or at least away from public view, appears in complete disarray these days. They lost the White House and Congress, and their gun control agenda is on the ropes with the exception of states including Washington, Oregon, California, Massachusetts and a handful of other “blue” strongholds. In those states, it appears Democrats in state legislatures are trying to push as much restrictive gun control as possible, perhaps to balance their losses elsewhere.
A major sign of just how bad things are going for Democrats is the posting of an apparent draft of an “interim final rule (IFR)” by the Justice Department which has Attorney General Pam Bondi taking the reigns of power away from ATF for determining restoration of rights cases. The notice says Bondi is “withdrawing effectively moribund regulations regarding how ATF will adjudicate applications for relief from the disabilities imposed by certain firearms laws and withdrawing a related delegation.”
For more than 30 years, ATF has not conducted “relief from disabilities” investigations. As explained in Bondi’s memo, “Pursuant to this statutory authority, and consistent with historical practice, the Attorney General delegated authority to adjudicate requests for relief from disabilities on the use of firearms as imposed by Federal law to ATF…In the early 1990s, Congress became concerned about the number of resources that ATF was using to adjudicate requests to relieve individual Americans from disabilities on their ownership of firearms…
“To allow ATF to return to its core function of investigating violations of federal firearms laws, see id. (“The Committee expects ATF to redeploy the positions and funding presently supporting firearms disability relief to the Armed Career Criminal program.”), Congress provided in 1992 that ‘none of the funds appropriated herein shall be available to investigate or act upon applications for relief from Federal firearms disabilities under 18 U.S.C. 925(c).’
“Since then, ATF has been unable to effectuate its regulatory authority to act on individual applications due to an identical appropriations rider enacted annually…”
Translation: Congress pulled the pin on relief investigations by not allowing ATF to use any of its funding for that purpose. By changing this, Bondi appears to be in the process of derailing a long-standing gun control mechanism.
The long and short of this is that the new administration learned from its first time at bat eight years ago. Nothing is going to happen overnight, but Bondi’s announcement does signal a significant departure from the status quo in effect for the past three decades.
For anti-gun Democrats on Capitol Hill, it could amount to a strong dose of karma. They have spent years eroding Second Amendment rights any way possible, and now it appears an effort may be slowly beginning to regain lost ground, and the administration hasn’t even been in office for 100 days.
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About Dave Workman
F dems.
You never hear about the ATF shutting down alcohol or tobacco dealers. Or conducting no-knock early morning raids on individuals to seach for illicit alcohol or tobacco. They might as well change their name to The Bureau of Firearms.
Not Surprised, Anti Gunners are nothing but Communist Clowns posing as Democrats. Or should I say Demorats.
The proper response to Democrats from Republicans is, “We won. You lost. Go to hell.”
So on March 3, 2025 these 81 Democrats in Congress that signed this letter to the President knowing and wilfully lied that Violent Crime went down 1.7% even though they knew at the time it had gone up 4.5% regardless of Republicans John Cornyn’s, Tom Tillis and Susan Collins hard work to come against our gun rights by authoring and advocating their Safer Communities Act.
There should be another congressional investigation and a formal public censure of all 81 of these Democrats for deliberatly lying to the President and American People.
My karma ran over my dogma…