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A Republican lawmaker is calling for the abolition of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), an agency within the Justice Department that he described as “a disaster.”

Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said that he’s planning to introduce legislation in the next Congress that would shutter the ATF which he accused of violating the Second Amendment.

“The ATF has been a disaster for the American people and our God-given Second Amendment rights,” Burlison said in a post to X, sharing a link to an interview with Fox News Digital. “It should absolutely be abolished.”

The House Freedom Caucus member told Fox News Digital that the ATF’s role could be best handled by the individual states.

“Every time they try to get involved, they mess things up,” Burlison pointed out. “They have a long history of mistakes of abusing individuals’ Second Amendment rights – all the way back to Ruby Ridge, to what happened at Waco, and then you had the Operation Fast and Furious.”

“This is an agency that, it just continues to violate citizens’ rights and Second Amendment rights,” he continued. “And I think at the end of the day this agency needs to be abolished and we need to let the states police what happens at the states.”

“There’s very few ATF officials,” he said, accusing the ATF of “co-opting or commandeering [local] law enforcement to enforce laws” that weren’t passed by state lawmakers.

Burlison, a freshman who took office in 2023, intends to re-introduce legislation sponsored by now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) who was picked by President-elect Donald J. Trump to be his attorney general but was forced to withdraw when a pack of GOP senators reportedly led by Mitch McConnell sabotaged his nomination.

He also announced his intention to get rid of the ATF in a video posted to X prior to Gaetz dropping out of the running to head up the DOJ.

“ATF provides enormous benefits to the American public through all of its efforts fighting violent crime every day,” ATF spokesperson Kristina Mastropasqua said in a statement to Fox News Digital, defending the agency.

It’s not only the ATF that needs to go and Rep. Burlison expressed enthusiasm for the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that’s headed up by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy which Trump described as the “Manhattan Project of our time.”

“The American people deserve government transparency. Washington D.C. needs a purge. It needs an enema. DOGE can’t come soon enough,” he wrote in a post to X earlier this month.

“A lot of the ABCs of this town need to be abolished starting with the Department of Education, I think we should eliminate the EPA…let all of these decision be made at the state level,” he also told Fox News Digital.

Additional sponsors of Gaetz’s legislation include Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Mike Collins (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Mary Miller (R-Ill.), Cory Mills (R-Fla.), and Barry Moore (R-Ala.), according to congress.gov.

Chris Donaldson
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