BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO AND FIREARMS

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms

Chapter 1: Introduction

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (abbreviated ATF) is a government regulation enforcement association inside the United States Department of Justice. Its responsibilities encompass the enquiry and avoidance of government infringements engaging the unlawful use, construct, and ownership of firearms and explosives, actions of arson and bombings, and illicit trafficking of alcoholic beverage and tobacco products. The ATF furthermore regulates by authorising the sale, ownership, and transport of firearms, ammunition, and explosives in interstate commerce. Many of ATF's undertakings are conveyed out in conjunction with task forces made up of state and localized regulation enforcement agents, for example Project Safe Neighborhoods. ATF functions a exclusive blaze study lab in Beltsville, Maryland, where full-scale mock-ups of lawless individual arsons can be reconstructed. The bureau is directed by Kenneth E. Melson, Deputy Director and William J. Hoover, Executive Assistant Director. ATF has almost 5,000 workers and an yearly allowance of $1.12 billion (2010).

The ATF was previously part of the United States Department of the Treasury, having been formed in 1886 as the "Revenue Laboratory" inside the Treasury Department's Bureau of Internal Revenue. The annals of ATF can be subsequently traced to the time of the revenuers or "revenoors" and the Bureau of Prohibition, which was formed as a unit of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in 1920, was made an unaligned bureau inside the Treasury Department in 1927, was moved to the Justice Department in 1930, and became, succinctly, a partition of the FBI in 1933.

When the Volstead Act was repealed in December 1933, the Unit was moved from the Department of Justice back to the Department of the Treasury where it became the Alcohol Tax Unit of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Special Agent Eliot Ness and some constituents of The "Untouchables", who had worked for the Prohibition Bureau while the Volstead Act was still in force, were moved to the ATU. In 1942, blame for enforcing government firearms regulations was granted to the ATU.

In the early 1950s, the Bureau of Internal Revenue was renamed "Internal Revenue Service" (IRS), and the ATU was granted the added blame of enforcing government tobacco levy laws. At this time, the title of the ATU was altered to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division (ATTD).

In 1968, with the route of the Gun Control Act, the bureau altered its title afresh, this time to the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division of the IRS and first started to be mentioned to by the initials "ATF." In Title XI of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Congress enacted the Explosives Control Act, 18 U.S.C.A. Chapter 40, which supplied for close guideline of the explosives commerce and designated certain arsons and bombings as government crimes. The Secretary of the Treasury was made to blame for administering the regulatory facets of the new regulation, and was granted jurisdiction over lawless individual violations pertaining to the regulatory ...