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As I've said before, back in the mid 70's when I first started with Houston P.D., the ATF (followed closely by the DEA) was our favorite federal agency to work with. You could see a definite change in their attitude in the early 80's when they switched their focus from motorcycle and other criminal gangs to scrutinizing local guns shops. Guess it was much easier and safer to search a law abiding business' records for mistakes than to work up a case against an actual criminal enterprise. There may still be a role for ATF, but it needs a serious overhaul. Forcelli has the opinion that the vast majority of the front line special agents are not anti 2nd Amendment. If true, that's very refreshing. Maybe it's just the administration and IOI's that need a critical house-cleaning. (Definitely ATF's administration, policies, procedures, and direction do.)

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I completely agree. ATF has great bomb techs and arson investigators who should be preserved, but the rest of the agency needs to go.

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But, What about that Evil Tobacco ??? LOL and is the ATF still going after bootleggers???

An Epitome of Feral Bureacrazy Agency rivaling the FIB.

Last I heard, there are about 250,000 Feral LE with arrest powers, excluding the "Techs" & "Admin". that "averages" to 5,000 Per State!!! and is probably a larger number.

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At this point, with the advent of internet communication, we should abolish all federal law enforcement agancies with the exception of those tasked with actually providing security for our government institutions. The past few decades, and indeed the last few years, have shown us how federal authority can be easily manipulated to target the citizenry.

A compromise would be to use the FLETCs and various other agency training facilities as places where state and local law enforcement can learn specialty skills; headed up and staffed by a federal law enforcement training division. This would allow the years of tradecraft to be preserved and distributed across the country while stripping federal powers to persecute law abiding citizens.

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No one in this agency can tie their shoe without permission from above. And by "Above" I'm not talking the US Presidency. Government agencies are not being commissioned by Constitutional Americans anymore and haven't been for several decades. And I will assert that they are mainly used as a distraction to keep attention away from what is really happening, which none of us will know about until it's far too late......as designed.

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I'd sure like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but when they keep on messing around, that's about impossible to do. I wonder if Gary Restaino is somehow related to Janet Reno? That last name is nearly the same but there's a 'stain' in the middle of it. (NO - that's NOT a dad joke - I'm not a dad)

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