Senate confirms ATF director for first time in seven years

WASHINGTON (CN) — The agency responsible for enforcing federal gun laws has a permanent director again.

In 48-46 split seen as a major win for the Biden administration, the Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Steve Dettelbach as the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Although several Democrats were absent from the vote due to positive Covid-19 test results, support from Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Rob Portman of Ohio helped Dettelbach’s nomination make it across the finish line.

Confirming any nominee to lead the ATF has been a notoriously difficult task, and Biden had to withdraw his previous nominee, David Chipman, despite his record as a former special agent. Chipman faced pushback in particular from the gun lobby over his advocacy work with the Giffords Law Group, a gun-control group named for its founding member, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who survived getting shot in the head at a campaign event.

On top of leadership vacancies, the ATF suffers from a notorious lack of funding and resources.

Dettelbach was previously the head of the white-collar investigations team at Baker Hostetler and spent a decade as a prosecutor, including as a U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio.

“When you become a prosecutor, and you interact with victims and survivors who have experienced incredible loss, it becomes a part of you. And it never leaves you,” Dettelbach said during his confirmation hearing back in May.

Republicans have been critical of Dettelbach’s confirmation, with many citing a ban on assault weapons that Dettelbach, a Democrat, supported during a failed 2018 run for attorney general of Ohio.

All Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee opposed the advancement of Dettelbach’s nomination last month.

Dettelbach’s confirmation comes as the nation grapples with the fallout from a series of devastating mass shootings, including massacres at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, at during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois.

The momentum from those shootings likely helped advance Dettelbach’s nomination as both President Joe Biden and Congress face increasing pressure to take action on gun violence and see the ATF enforce new federal gun policies.

“When a mass shooter tears apart a community like Highland Park, Illinois, ATF agents are among the first to arrive on scene," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, also the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “In fact, in the hours following the attack in Highland Park, it was ATF agents who traced the firearm belonging to the confessed shooter. Our country and our communities deserve an ATF that is fully equipped to respond on our nation’s darkest days — and to enforce the laws on the books to prevent these tragedies in the first place. Steve Dettelbach is exactly the right leader for this challenge.”

Congress passed its first substantial gun control legislation in decades earlier this month, but political pressure remains on Democrats who are pushing for further reform targeting assault weapons and age restrictions on gun purchases.

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