ATF May Care More About The NRA Than You And Me

Posted by | March 20, 2015 11:00 | Filed under: Contributors Opinion Politics Stuart Shapiro

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Last week the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) announced that it was indefinitely delaying a proposal to ban armor piercing bullets.  They cited an outpouring of public opposition to the proposal.  In my latest column, I argue that it’s not the public that ATF is worried about:

…the comments were likely not a spontaneous public outpouring of anger but rather an organized campaign by one of the most powerful organized interests in Washington, the National Rifle Association (NRA). . . If indeed this was merely a campaign organized by the NRA, then ATF has reason to be concerned. While it may not care so much about the 80,000 comments, it does care about a much smaller but much more powerful constituency. Agencies do not like having their proposals overturned by Congress. They also do not like having their appropriations slashed in response to policy changes that anger the congressional majority. The NRA is well known to be very powerful on Capitol Hill and the large number of comments was a signal to the ATF that the gun lobby cares a lot about this issue and will be ready to punish the agency in Congress if it moves forward.

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Copyright 2015 Liberaland
By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.

2 responses to ATF May Care More About The NRA Than You And Me

  1. ExPFCWintergreen March 20th, 2015 at 23:37

    The ATF certainly FEARS the NRA more than it does you and me.

  2. Odysseus M Tanner April 3rd, 2015 at 21:38

    Or maybe because the whole thing was just stupid.

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