Here’s Who Trump Might Nominate to Head the ATF

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The new administration is coming together rapidly, certainly much faster than the first Trump presidency, where the president-elect admitted that he made some bad personnel decisions. He owed it to a lack of experience and an underestimation of the threat he faced within the Washington establishment.

With no election on the horizon, Mr. Trump will go all-out on many policy areas, especially regarding the border. On gun policy, the president-elect is said to be looking at Blake Masters, who unsuccessfully ran for the US Senate in Arizona during the 2022 midterms (via Semafor):

Blake Masters is under consideration to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for President-elect Donald Trump.

Masters met with the incoming president’s transition team on Thursday and is interested in helming the regulatory agency, two people familiar with the situation told Semafor. He lost two races for Congress in Arizona, this past fall and in 2022, while running as a Trump loyalist.

Masters was previously vying to lead the Presidential Personnel Office, as Semafor first reported. That low-profile, influential role focused on administration hiring ultimately went to Sergio Gor, the president and co-founder of Donald Trump Jr.’s publishing company.

[…]

If Masters does get the nod, he won’t have an easy path in the Senate — simply due to the history of the ATF director position, which involves oversight of politically sensitive gun policies. President Joe Biden pulled his first ATF nominee, David Chipman, before his second nominee, Steve Dettelbach, was confirmed in 2022.

[…]

Brandon Herrera, a gun advocate who narrowly lost a GOP primary race against Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales earlier this year, is also interested in the ATF position. He said last month he would “hack, slash, and cripple that agency in ways it could never recover from” if confirmed to the job.