“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” This might as well be the slogan of all gun control proponents. Be it a high-profile mass shooting, a gun crime wave, or an assassination attempt, all of these incidents are fair game as a pretext to pass gun control.

MSNBC columnist Frank Figliuzzi wasted no time after Ryan Routh’s failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump on September 15, 2024. In a column that he penned one day later, Figliuzzi pushed to double the “size and budget” of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The MSNBC columnist observed that the two assassination attempts on Trump took place within a time span of two months, putting significant pressure on federal law enforcement agencies such as the Secret Service. He stated that “the Secret Service internal report on its own lapses, which led to eight shots fired at Trump by a young sniper on July 13, was scathing.”

Figliuzzi was highly critical of open carry in the post. He wrote, “That task, to guard the lives of their protectees in outdoor settings, including in the 31 states that allow citizens to walk around displaying a gun, in a nation with 20 million assault-style rifles, defies logic. Something must change.”

Gun rights advocates who have done their homework will figure out that Figliuzzi’s observations are inaccurate. AWR Hawkins of Breitbart News highlighted that “open carry is the law of the land in 46 states, not 31.”

He added the following: “There are more than 28 million AR and AK-style rifles in circulation, which is far more than 20 million.” The most striking part about Figliuzzi’s column was his call to increase the size and scope of the ATF. His solution is to, “…[D]ouble the size and budget of the federal agency responsible for enforcing existing gun laws.”

The ATF is an unaccountable government agency whose sole purpose is to grant unelected officials the power to regulate, restrict, and eventually destroy the right to bear arms. When politicians can’t pass laws through conventional legislative methods, they rely on the ATF to impose anti-gun measures on the population, a clear Constitutional violation that would make the Founding Fathers roll over in their graves.

The use of the ATF to advance the anti-gun agenda has been most apparent throughout the Biden regime. For example, Biden’s ATF enacted a “Proposed Rule” to ban stabilizing pistol braces, which would have potentially impacted 40,000,000 firearms and turned millions of otherwise lawful gun owners into felons. Thankfully, this past summer US District Judge Reed O’Connor vacated the ATF’s AR pistol brace rule, noting that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

Additionally, the Biden administration announced plans to place limits on the semi-automatic rate of fire on firearms and prohibit 3D-printed firearms. That same day, Biden warned about congressional Republicans attempting to undermine the FBI and ATF in an X/Twitter post.

Thankfully, this past summer, US District Judge Reed O’Connor vacated the aforementioned ATF AR pistol brace rule, highlighting that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Nevertheless, gun owners can’t exclusively rely on the courts to preserve their right to bear arms.

Eventually, the pro-gun community must be able to exert enough pressure and create a political environment where pro-gun politicians will be elected. From there,  gun owners can place pressure to pass legislation to undermine and eventually abolish the ATF and the litany of gun control measures that have been passed over the last century.

That is the only path toward restoring gun rights in America.