Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

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Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
- ATF -

Seal of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.svg
State level Federal authority
position Civil judicial authority
Supervisory authority Ministry of Justice
founding July 1, 1972
Headquarters Washington, DC
Authority management Regina Lombardo, Acting Deputy Director
Servants 4,559
Web presence www.atf.gov
ATF headquarters in Washington, DC

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ( ATF , German  Office for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ) is a federal police agency under the United States Department of Justice .

tasks

The ATF is responsible for combating the illegal distilling of alcohol and the smuggling of alcohol, tobacco and weapons . It is designed to curb the illegal possession , modification and unauthorized use of firearms . In the field of explosives , it combats illicit manufacture, purchase and sale, possession and use. The agency also deals with fire investigations and the monitoring of and compliance with the laws associated with its areas of responsibility.

The ATF works regularly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

history

The predecessor authority was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (until March 2003), from whose areas of responsibility contained in the name the abbreviation ATF is derived, i.e. A for Alcohol, T for Tobacco (German “Tobacco”) and F for Firearms (Eng. "Firearms").

Investigations by the ATF and an attempt to search for illegal weapons possession by the Branch Davidians sect in Waco , Texas, resulted in a 51-day siege in 1993, during which four ATF agents and 82 Davidians, including children, died.

In late 2011, the ATF was criticized for its practices in fighting the drug war in Mexico . In press releases, the officials were accused of having illegally supplied large quantities of weapons to the drug cartels in the hope that they could, among other things, in this way. a. to be able to follow the path of machine guns. These reports turned out to be a politically motivated misrepresentation of Operation Fast and Furious ; the legitimate activity of the ATF had been massively hindered by the federal prosecutor's office. The Republican Party in Congress attempted to stage a scandal over US Attorney General Eric Holder . After the actual relationships were discovered, some processes in the ATF were redesigned.

Web links

Commons : Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

swell

  1. ↑ www.atf.gov History (Engl.). Accessed June 11, 2010.
  2. ↑ www.atf.gov Executive Staff (Engl.). Accessed July 18, 2019.
  3. ^ Fortune: The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal. Retrieved April 8, 2020 . , June 26, 2012
  4. ↑ United States Department of Justice - Office of the Inspector General: A Review of ATF's Operation Fast and Furious and Related Matters (PDF; 4.7 MB), September 2012