#Atf

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to TFB’s Silencer Saturday, brought to you by Yankee Hill Machine, manufacturers of the new Victra-12 shotgun suppressor. It is now 2026, and tax stamps for most items are $0! But how is the infrastructure that creates those stamps holding up? Here are some collected data points that give us some ideas.

Life comes at you fast. By the time we published our article about the Franklin Armory Antithesis, the ATF asked the company to bring back 5.56×45mm Antithesis units pending a new classification. Franklin Armory says it’s voluntarily requesting returns for a full refund on those 5.56 models.

US officials report that Kash Patel has been removed as acting ATF Director and replaced by Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll. The change in leadership was not yet announced by the Justice Department when Reuters broke the news. Patel, who was sworn in as FBI Director on February 21 and named acting ATF director several days later remains at the helm of the FBI.

The word on the street is that the big changes at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives will continue. According to CNN, hundreds of ATF agents are about to be transferred over to the FBI instead.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has a new top lawyer. Robert Leider has taken the role of Assistant Director and Chief Counsel at ATF. Mr. Leider is a law professor who has written extensively on issues like government monopoly on use of force, militias, and the right to bear arms.

Franklin Armory and the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition (FRAC) have scored a significant victory over the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in the United States District Court of North Dakota. The action, brought on by the ATF's wrongful classification of the Franklin Armory Reformation and Antithesis firearms, led Judge Daniel M. Traynor to vacate the agency’s prior misclassifications and validate a well-known issue within the firearms industry and the Second Amendment community, that is, ATF abuse regarding firearm technology classification.

The changes in the U.S. federal bureaucracies just keep on rolling, with news now that Pamela Hicks, top lawyer at the ATF, is outski.

Remember when the ATF made out like it was going to start classifying some firearms with pistol braces as regulated items under the National Firearms Act? And remember how they walked that back afterwards? And supposedly clarified the issue here? Well, if you take a careful look at a case working its way through the federal system, it looks like the ATF hasn’t quite given up on their ban plan yet.

The ATF just recently announced that current Director Steven Dettelbach has submitted his resignation to President Joe Biden, effective January 18, 2025. ATF Chief of Public Affairs Kristina Mastropasqua confirmed the news to the public, stating, “As is typical in a transition, and consistent with the memorandum sent to all presidential appointees on Dec. 19, Director Dettelbach has rendered his resignation to President Biden effective January 18, 2025. Leading the courageous and incredible men and women of ATF has been the greatest honor of his professional life.” We can presumably expect that the incoming administration will appoint either a new interim director or if the ATF gets its wish, a new permanent director.