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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33245 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Anyone know of Trumpian "reform" of the BATFE, thus far? Doing an internet search for "Trump BATFE" with a one month time limit doesn't turn up anything. Anyone else wondering why the BATFE should/would be spared? It seems to me that the BATFE should be near the top of the list of federal agencies the base wants "reformed." Some ideas for possible reasons:

The base doesn't actually care about BATFE fuckery, unlike libertarians and policy wonks. (Anyone know if this is true?)

Donald "Take the guns first, and do due process later"/bump stock ban Trump is (mostly) secretly pro-gun control (for little people, of course; not VIPs. Perhaps supported by his general lack of comment on the issue, this election

Some strategist decided that, unlike the FBI, the BATFE would be perceived as "legitimate law enforcement" and, thusly, is off-limits.

There has been some, though it's both indirect and likely to be low-impact outside of the courts.

Some amount of it's probably just that Trump isn't very pro-gun, and doesn't really want to spend the political capital on it. Same reason that he's not drawing a lot of lines in the sand for abortion law. Some amount is probably procedural -- as much as the lawfare is being rough for DOGE, most of what DOGE's going after doesn't have the nice clear-line text, while a lot of the ATF funding does, or it has civil service protections in a way that's harder to argue violates separation of powers -- similar to how Brigadia v. Buttigeg wasn't going to get settled before (and likely not after) it got renamed. Some of it's that the malefactors don't have names, where even someone that obsesses over trying to identify specific bad actors or bad behaviors just gets organization or sections or groups that would need a forensic accountant and a lot of luck to actually figure out who called the code red made decisions.

Some of it's just the scope of the problem, in the same way that Trump isn't throwing the FBI out despite the arguments in favor. It's one thing to bite the bullet on throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's another to actually take that process on, at this scale.

Some amount of it's probably just that Trump isn't very pro-gun, and doesn't really want to spend the political capital on it.

There's different things here. I think he's reasonably pro-gun, he just thinks he's fulfilled his obligation to the NRA and friends by getting Bruen done for them (and likewise for the pro-lifers and Dobbs).

Trump is a lot of things, but he's not the kind of person to consider an obligation like that as open-ended.

Trump did hand out stuff to pro-lifers. It was mostly minor stuff like pardoning FACE act violations, but he did.

Thanks. I saw the executive order, but I interpreted it as lip-service-until-proven-otherwise - the faithful implementation of the stated goal would be to eliminate all BATFE rules about regulated firearm components and disallow Federal prosecutors from pursuing charges for anything but the clearest violations of statutory language, which doesn't require 30 days of review.

I miss your effort-posts on law stuff, btw.

Doing an internet search for "Trump BATFE" with a one-month time limit doesn't turn up anything.

Try "Trump ATF".

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