News and Views:
Closing in on the ATF?

Could the ATF be on the O-U-T?

About this time last month, Iowa Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst fired off a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi calling for a full investigation of alleged “gross and substantial waste, fraud and abuse, as well as potentially criminal false certification of government records and whistleblower retaliation” by two senior officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The senators demanded “immediate corrective action.”

This comes five months after Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Eric Burlison of Missouri, introduced H.R. 129, known as the “Abolish the ATF Act.” The legislation is co-sponsored by Reps. Andy Biggs (AZ-05), Mike Collins (GA-10), Bob Onder (MO-03), Andy Ogles (TN-05), Mary Miller (IL-15), Keith Self (TX-03), and Paul Gosar (AZ-09). It was assigned to the House Judiciary Committee.

The letter was mailed a few days after Reuters reported the Trump administration was proposing a budget cut for ATF. The proposal calls for a budget of about $1.2 billion in FY 2026, down from the $1.625 billion during FY 2025.

The bill, which may not go anywhere immediately, amounts to a warning shot that the bureaucracy is going to change. It’s political chess of sorts, and people who spent the last four years making gun owners miserable just might get a taste of karma.

The senators gave Bondi until May 23 to respond. In their 5-page letter to Bondi, Acting ATF Director Daniel Driscoll and Assistant Attorney General Jolene Ann Lauria, Grassley and Ernst detailed their allegations. Click on the link and give it a read.

“The Biden administration’s ATF illegally lined employees’ pockets with tens-of-millions of taxpayer dollars,” Grassley and Ernst alleged. “These Washington bureaucrats must answer for their misconduct, and if heads don’t roll, nothing will change.”

More than ten years ago, I interviewed Grassley following the Fast & Furious scandal which was then unfolding. His down-to-earth manner, coupled with a very sharp sense of propriety, got my attention. He made his reputation probing government irregularity, and if you worked in government, he’s the last guy on this planet you’d want to have asking questions about what you’ve been doing.

Another School Shooter Parent Charged

Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, Madison, Wis., has been charged with two counts of providing a dangerous weapon to a child and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Rupnow is the father of Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, who took her own life after fatally shooting two people and wounding several others in a shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School late last year. Police recovered two guns at the crime scene, both having been purchased by the elder Rupnow according to published reports. He has never before been arrested, has lived in the community his entire life, his parents live there, he is employed and the judge last month set his bail at a very low $20,000 when prosecutors had asked for five times the amount.
A few days after his arrest, he was able to post bond, according to WQOW News.

Rupnow is being criminally prosecuted for a crime his child committed, but for which the state contends he is responsible because he bought the guns to which his daughter had access. Before his case, James and Jennifer Crumbley, parents to the teen who opened fire at Oxford High School in Michigan back in 2021, were both convicted of involuntary manslaughter last year in separate trials. They will spend at least a decade in prison, while their son has been sentenced to life for murdering four students in his rampage.

What’s happening to Rupnow and what happened to the Crumbleys should serve as a lesson to other parents who let their warped kids have access to firearms. Depending upon one’s perspective, they’re a lot better off than the parents of Kip Kinkel, who went to prison for opening fire at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon back in 1998. Kinkel murdered both of his parents before staging his attack. His father had actually bought him a gun, in an effort to “connect” with the then-15-year-old.

Don’t forget Nancy Lanza. She was murdered by her son, Adam, who then took her legally-purchased firearms and killed 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. While Kinkle is in prison, Lanza’s last shot ended his life as police arrived at the school.

Behind the laws which call for punishing parents of school shooters is essentially a feeling of moral outrage which follows such tragedies, so “somebody has to be punished.” Only time will tell whether this strategy works.

State Supremes Uphold Mag Ban

When the Washington State Supreme Court last month ruled 7-2 that so-called “large-capacity magazines” are not protected by the Second Amendment, it was not unexpected but it still didn’t go down well with Northwest gun owners. The case — known as State v. Gator’s Guns — will have reverberations across the country and its next stop might be at the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the Evergreen State banned magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds back in 2022, Gator’s continued selling them and challenged the ban in court. Superior Court Judge Gary Bashor ruled the ban was unconstitutional. The state quickly appealed and the case went to the totally left-of-center state Supremes.

The ruling spans 19 pages. The dissent, authored by Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud, stretches 34 pages. Joined by Justice G. Helen Whitener, Gordon McCloud wrote, “The Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms…More specifically, it protects the right of law-abiding people to keep and bear arms ‘in common use’ — not just arms that the government approves of. And it protects that conduct when it is done ‘for lawful purposes’ including, but not limited to, ‘self-defense’ — not just when it involves returning fire, as the State seems to contend. Finally, the Second Amendment’s protection of that conduct is the highest in the ‘home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute.’” For a liberal jurist, such a statement is an eyebrow raiser.

The majority opinion was written by Justice Charles W. Johnson, who declared, “LCMs…fall outside either protection of the right to bear arms because the provisions protect only those arms that are commonly used for self-defense, and we have been presented with no credible and persuasive evidence or argument that LCMs are commonly used for such a purpose.”

Pay attention to this case, because it has the potential of righting a lot of wrongs.

Empire State Nonsense

Meanwhile in New York, lawmakers in Albany adopted a state budget with about $60 million earmarked for a state-level Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Yeah, it’s patterned after the Biden administration’s train wreck national OGVP, which Donald Trump immediately scrapped after taking office.

According to a report at WTEN, New York’s OGVP is part of a bigger gun control effort, which includes these other budget items:

• $7.2 million for community-based gun- and domestic-violence prevention programs

• $40 million for police and legal costs to better enforce Extreme Risk Protection Orders, or “red flag” laws

• $10 million in competitive grants to local community groups like the Greater Direction mentorship programs in Buffalo

It’s a lot of money, and it’s all yours. Sticking Empire State taxpayers with the bill for this soon-to-be fiasco shows just how determined anti-gunners are to keep a bad idea alive.

Coming Next:

Take a good look at this J-frame S&W. It’s a classic from the mid-1950s and Dave just spent some quality time at the range, which he’ll share next time.

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