The goals of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are to pursue “trigger pullers” in neighborhoods driving violent crime and cut off the flow of guns into the black market, said Director Steve Dettelbach during an appearance Monday at the City of Club of Cleveland.
“How do we get the worst-of-the-worst off the street and cut off their guns?” Dettelbach asked during his prepared remarks.
The Cleveland native and former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio was named ATF director 18 months ago.
The bureau participates in law enforcement locally by joining in task forces with local law enforcement, said Dettelbach. That includes one in Cleveland over the summer that led to the seizure of more than 240 guns, including 11 linked to homicides.
“For ATF, partnerships aren’t just an occasional strategy,” Dettelbach said. “They are part of our DNA. They’re indispensable to our mission.”
In the 30 years since starting his career as a prosecutor, Dettelbach said the growth of the federal-local task force is the biggest change in law enforcement.
The ATF is working toward the second goal — cutting off the flow of guns into the black market –— by seeking to change a rule for gun sellers, often referred to as the ‘gun show loophole’ that allows some sellers to operate without a federal license.
“It has likely never been easier for a law-abiding person to get all sorts of firearms,” Dettelbach said. “But we have to acknowledge that it's also never been easier for criminals to get them illegally.”
Under the proposed rule, which received more than 370,000 comments during the open comment period, anyone with a table at a gun show would need a federal license. That means they’d have to conduct background checks before selling a firearm and would have to keep records on every gun sold that could be accessed by the ATF.
“If a gun is recovered in a criminal investigation, and we have the serial number, ATF can trace that number to its first retail purchase,” Dettelbach said. “And in cases like the 4th of July massacre in Highland Park, Illinois, the Brooklyn subway shooting, it can be a crucial lead in real-time given to police to catch the killer.
The ATF is working on opening a crime gun intelligence center in Northeast Ohio in the spring that would help trace guns used in violent crime back to the person who purchased it.
