The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has challenged Congressional Republicans to withhold funding from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the Fiscal Year 2024 budget “until Democrats and federal bureaucrats publicly recognize Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, and stop their attacks on legal gun ownership.”
Coincidentally, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is preparing for a hearing Thursday on “ATF’s Assault on the Second Amendment: When is Enough Enough?” The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in the House Rayburn Office Building.
The Biden administration has released its proposed Fiscal Year 2024 budget, which includes “robust investments to bolster Federal law enforcement capacity.”
“The Budget includes $17.8 billion, an increase of $1.2 billion above the 2023 enacted level,” the document reads, “for DOJ law enforcement, including a total of $1.9 billion for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and explosives to expand multijurisdictional gun trafficking strike forces with additional personnel, increase regulation of the firearms industry, and implement the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.”
The budget package further includes “$51 million to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to support the continued implementation of enhanced background checks required by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.”
At no time when President Joe Biden has called for “enhanced background checks” has he or anyone in the administration defined what that entails. But CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb is confident it amounts to just another effort by Biden to erode the Second Amendment.
“We’ve seen attacks on Second Amendment rights under previous Democrat presidents,” Gottlieb noted in a statement to the press, “but the Biden administration has pulled out all the stops. Joe Biden has publicly declared his desire to ban modern semiautomatic rifles and 9mm pistols, the most popular firearms in the nation. Millions of honest citizens own semiautomatic rifles for all kinds of uses, including home defense, competition, predator control, recreational shooting and hunting, and they have never harmed anyone. Likewise, millions of men and women own and use 9mm pistols for personal and home protection, training, target shooting, competition, business protection, and other legitimate uses.”
Biden’s admission came, perhaps unintentionally, during a July 2021 CNN “Townhall” broadcast, when he told the audience he has been trying to stop the sale of modern semiautomatic rifles and 9mm pistols.
“Under Joe Biden,” Gottlieb said, “the ATF has been weaponized against law-abiding citizens, and his budget proposal includes $1.9 billion for the agency to expand operations and increase regulation of the firearms industry.
“Clearly,” he stated, “Biden and the Democrats have decided that American gun owners are their enemy. They are scrambling to restrict the Second Amendment rights of tens of millions of citizens whose only offense is that they want to exercise their right to keep and bear arms. Last week, the president signed an executive order to create even more restrictions. Where does this stop? “
He said a GOP roadblock to ATF funding would “send a message to the White House and Capitol Hill Democrats” they couldn’t ignore.
