In a CBS Sunday Morning feature titled “ATF Under The Gun,” Deputy Director Thomas Brandon detailed the ATF’s mission: “It’s to regulate firearms that can be misused. You know, we’re a small agency with a big job.”
Brandon has a gift for understatement, as his mission statement would seem to encompass regulating every firearm in the United States. To accomplish that, Brandon says the ATF needs a national gun registry of all firearms to replace the current system of searching paper records from licensed dealers: “Would it be efficient and effective? Absolutely. Would the taxpayers benefit with public safety? Absolutely. Are we allowed to do it? No.”
To its credit, CBS also interviewed Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., who explained why such a registry is banned under federal law: “I think that having a database of gun sales amounts to de facto gun registration. And that is something that Congress would never approve, and which I would never approve of.”
