WASHINGTON — The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives brings fewer than a hundred alcohol and tobacco cases a year. It now plays second fiddle to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on explosives. And its skill at catching firearms violators is in doubt after the flawed probe known as Fast and Furious.
No wonder the agency’s boss is looking to reinvent it, and maybe even change its name.
The ATF is a Washington oddity, stitched together in the 1970s from units going back to the age of Prohibition. Gun-rights supporters are wary of it, yet they are also loath to see firearms regulation move to the FBI.
So the ATF survives, and acting director B. Todd Jones has to figure out what to do with it. “We’re the entity that everyone loves to hate,” said the 55-year-old former Marine.
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