“Simply put, ATF is an agency that ensures violent criminals are put behind bars,” Sen. Jerry Moran explained in his introduction/testimonial for Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director nominee Robet Cekada, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Feb. 6 confirmation hearing. That he was stumping for the guy is hardly surprising, because while widely regarded as “a strong proponent of Second Amendment rights, consistently voting against gun control legislation and advocating for gun owners’ rights,” he also asserts “We must redouble our efforts to enforce all existing gun laws, which are extremely effective in protecting law-abiding citizens…” How that differs from a colonist in 1775 saying “Enforce existing Intolerable Acts” is unclear.
No matter, at least as far as the “gun rights” establishment is concerned. Cekada appears to be a shoo-in:
“Trump ATF Director Nominee Faces Little Pushback in Confirmation Hearing,” The Reload reports. “President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) experienced smooth sailing through his Senate examination this week.”
“President Trump’s ATF pick clears Senate hearing easily,” the Second Amendment Foundation echoed.
“An ATF Director Republicans Can (Finally) Support,” the National Review gushed.
And why not? Recognized “gun rights leaders” were out there heaping praise! Here are some examples:
“NSSF-Supported ATF Director Nominee Cekada Questioned at Senate Hearing, Vows ‘Not to Burden Law-Abiding Gun Owners’” the National Shooting Sports Foundation effused. “This morning NSSF sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) expressing the industry’s ‘strong and unqualified support’ for confirming Deputy Director Cekada to be the Senate-confirmed director of the bureau that regulates the firearm and ammunition industry.”
“In his role as Deputy Director, we have worked closely with Robert Cekada to ensure law-abiding gun owners have a seat at the table in shaping policy,” the American Suppressor Association weighed in. “If confirmed, he would be the first ever truly pro-Second Amendment nominee to head the agency.”
Would he be? Is he “truly pro-Second Amendment”? Because you can’t really tell from the questions put to Cekada by the Committee, nor from his carefully qualified answers.
Democrat “Grilling”
That Democrats didn’t push harder, as in hardly pushed at all, was the first clue. This is the party of citizen disarmament, and if they were interested in blocking the nominee, it wasn’t reflected in their interrogations.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Cekada about the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network. Missing from that is for it to “work” presumes guns used in crimes can be traced to the criminals who used them, and Democrats then use that as “justification” to press for registration and more. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) basically concerned themselves with why ATF was lending agents to help with “the diversion of agents to conduct immigration enforcement,” and trying to get him to go on record with an opinion critical of the president’s deportation agenda. That’s hardly surprising considering their party opened the floodgates and implemented incentives with the admitted goal of a “pathway to citizenship” for illegals. Schiff also questioned him on 3D printers and “ghost guns,” leading Cekada to volunteer, “I’ll include in your definition of guns … is we also look at personal privately made firearms is the description we use for 3D printed firearms and for drop in auto sears, which can convert firearms to shoot uh fully automatically.” You know, “arms.”
Another Committee Democrat, Hawaii’s insufferable Sen. Mazie Hirono, continued to prove herself a rival to Rep. Hank “Tip Over Guam” Johnson’s (D-GA) idiocy by focusing her query on if Cekada would confess that he had “ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature.”
It was “No,” to that one, and the nominee’s stock answer to the other “concerns” was that “The number of agents that have been diverted to uh focus on Title 8 enforcement is actually averaging somewhere between 75 and 100 agents per day” and “these efforts have been very much focused on violent crime, specifically assisting HSI and ICE illegal aliens that are members of MS-13, 18th Street, illegal aliens that are carrying firearms.”
That Cekada considers possession and carrying firearms to be the issue, rather than how they are used and abused, recalls a warning issued 20 years ago by the Project Exile Condemnation Coalition, with signatories including Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, and Aaron Zelman of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
“We condemn any program that involves enforcing unconstitutional ‘laws’, even if such ‘laws’ are enforced only against violent criminals,” the group’s statement argued. “Unconstitutional ‘laws’ are illegal, harmful to public safety, tyrannical, and are inevitably enforced against ordinary, non-criminal citizens.”
That citizens can find themselves to be “prohibited persons” for any variety of “offenses,” including non-violent ones, and that the government refuses to define standardized criteria for restoration of rights recognition, shows a clear danger not only with the current administration, but especially should Democrats regain executive power and instruct ATF to implement their priorities.
Republican Inquiries
Republican questioning was moderately “better” than the Democrats, but the focus on “law and order” emphasizes different concerns than focusing on the right to keep and bear arms.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) called “the elimination of the $200 National Firearms Act tax stamp … a significant victory for Second Amendment” but noted “we still have pretty significant restrictions in place, including various registration requirements that exist under the National Firearms Act,” including for short-barrel rifles, and short-barrel shotguns and suppressors. Cekada acknowledged that, replying “ATF is bound by the law at this point, and if Congress chose to move suppressors out of the NFA into the GCA [Gun Control Act], ATF would be supportive of Congress’s decision.” That means he’d enforce existing infringements. And whatever else Congress elected to impose.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) wanted to talk about what Cekada would do “to support the effort of the Memphis Safe Task Force,” and he replied, “We have about 40 ATF agents in Memphis that are assigned to this task force, and we’ve made up for about 32% of the federal cases that have been brought forward in Memphis for federal firearms violations.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) was concerned with arbitrary, conflicting, and punitive rulemaking, citing his lawsuit as state attorney general for Missouri against the frame and receiver rule, and citing, “similar rules such as the stabilizing brace rule and the engaged in business rule that threatened to make responsible law-abiding Americans into criminals and left gun owners with vague difficult to follow mandates.”
Citing the Administrative Procedures Act, Cekada declined to elaborate on any specific rule but in general committed to, “following President Trump’s Second Amendment executive order [and] undergoing a thorough review of all regulations.” Which regulations they’ll prioritize and when they’ll get around to it is anybody’s guess.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) praised his home state of Missouri, saying, “we’ve got to be the strongest protector of the Second Amendment anywhere in the country, citing how, “the Biden DOJ actually asked local sheriffs across Missouri for records of concealed carry permit holders, which state law explicitly forbids the sheriffs to turn over.” He asked Cekada, “Can you commit that under your leadership ATF will go in a different direction than the last administration, that you’ll focus your law enforcement resources on criminals as opposed to law-abiding citizens who have rights under both the federal and state constitutions?”
“First of all, under my watch as a deputy director since April of last year [ATF] has 1,000% been focused on holding people accountable who have committed violent crimes,” Cekada responded. “We’re not here trying to burden unnecessarily the American citizen who has the complete right to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms and we will not be doing that in the future if I am so confirmed.”
That presupposes “shall not be infringed” acknowledges NECESSARY burdens and excuses the current infringements that citizens exercising their right can be entrapped with for “violating.”
Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) finished up the questioning, but her focus was on “illicit Chinese vapes” and on explosives training ATF is conduction at Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal in her home state of Alabama.
Better than…
To be clear, Cekada is a definite improvement over anyone the Democrats would be putting in that position, especially noting out-and-out citizen disarmament fanatics like David Chipman being considered in the past and anti-gun lumps like past Director Steve Dettelbach making infringing on citizens’ rights a priority. Noting the legal environment the nominee is part of and stepping into, he’s as good as we’re going to get, but hardly measures up to the superlatives of being “truly pro-Second Amendment.” You can’t be and still work for ATF, which is why none of the NRA A-rated senators lobbed anything but softballs that he could generalize his way around. You’ll note none of them asked him to define the Second Amendment and what the Founders meant by it or asked him which gun laws ATF enforces that he personally considers to be constitutional or unconstitutional. No one asked him why machine guns shouldn’t be legal, or why the Militia of the whole people was deemed necessary to the security of a free State.
No one put him on the spot over what he intends to do about an illegal database ATF is alleged to have built that holds up to a billion-gun registry records in violation of federal law.
None of them asked him what Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked of Andrew B. Davis, nominee for United States District Judge for the Western District of Texas, at the same confirmation hearing Cekada appeared at: “I want to buy a bazooka, and I found a good deal on one in Europe. Can I buy it and own it and use it here in America?”
“The ATF shouldn’t exist,” Gun Owners of America asserted in a Facebook post announcing the Cekada hearing. “But since it does, grab the popcorn and watch the confirmation hearing for its next would-be director.”
As long as they brought up popcorn entertainment, there’s a life-imitates-art kind of vibe the whole Cekada show – and that’s what it was – recalls. In the movie Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, cadets were subjected to the Kobayashi Maru test where their choice was to let a freighter in distress meet its doom or try to rescue it and be destroyed. It was a character test, to see how they would respond to a “no-win scenario,” and it was revealed that Captain Kirk was the only student who ever beat the simulation, and he only did that because he cheated. Leading an agency that’s unconstitutional on its face is a no-win scenario for the Second Amendment. It can’t be done.
As gun owners, we can either submit to the destruction of our rights, or we can have our lives destroyed. Some, a few, will just not comply, and some of those, if smart and lucky, will not get caught. Just understand—the game is rigged against us, and the guy playing for the government – praise from prominent “gun rights” influencers notwithstanding – is working for the Klingons.
