There’s At Least One Guy We Feel Sorry For at the ATF

There’s a lot of bad blood between gun owners, people in the industry and ATF, particularly in recent years after the agency has been weaponized by the Biden administration. Not only has ATF done unethical and illegal things to gun owners, retailers, and manufacturers over the years, but they’ve also been caught running guns to drug cartels in foreign countries. There’s one incident from 1993, however that rises above the rest of the agency’s ignominious achievements — the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

To be clear, the Branch Davidians weren’t a “normal” Christian church by any means. They were allegedly a cult and there were credible accusations of statutory rape and child molestation. But the case against them for breaking federal weapons laws was thin…likely too thin to have issued a search warrant.

Regardless of the warrant’s legality, there’s no justification for what happened. After a failed raid in which several agents were shot and killed (and may have used illegal force), followed by a 51-day siege and a second attempted raid using a tank and tear gas, the whole compound went up in flames, killing dozens of men, women, and — indisputably — innocent children. Evidence of possible wrongdoing in the initial raid also somehow went missing, so no one was ultimately held accountable for the debacle.

Despite the scores of innocent lives lost and the suspicious nature of the whole seige and operation, the agency still does something extremely stupid every year: it memorializes its agents who died on social media, as they did yesterday . . .

As you might expect, people on social media aren’t very nice about it. The ATF’s posts are met with images of a dying ATF agent, details on the illegality of the operation, insults of every kind imaginable, and a hilarious assortment of memes every year. Images of a man posing over a burnt body, images of the fire, and much more inform the newest generation of gun owners who may not be familiar with the firearm regulatory agency’s record.

This year, however, something special happened. Twitter X now has a feature called “community notes” where a sufficient number of users can add explanatory context or fact checks to original tweets. As a result, ATF’s tweet was…noted.

Here are a couple more tweets they had the stones to do. If you’re memes folder is running low or you’re looking for fresh material, be sure to check them out!

One Guy We Feel Bad For: The ATF’s Social Media Intern

The agency continues to deserve every bit of the vitriol it gets every year when it puts up these tone-deaf posts. Not only did their unlawful actions result in the deaths of 76 peoploe, including children, but no one ever got any real punishment for the agency’s crimes. No amount of mean tweets will ever be enough.

But, there’s one guy at the agency we should feel sorry for every year: the kid they trick into managing the agency’s social media account. I’d be willing to bet they have to wrangle a new one every year to get them to do it.

“Hey intern, be sure to post some materials about the four agents who lost their lies heroically in 1993.”

“Yes, sir.”

The rest of the agents are probably in the other room laughing their collective asses off when the poor guy finds out the whole story and has to deal with the inevitable online backlash.

While my version of the story may be entertaining, there might not really be an intern. Who knows? The posts could just be a big middle finger raised to America every year. Either way, the agency needs to be disbanded and most of the laws it enforces need to be repealed or struck down in court (a process that is playing out as we write this in courtrooms all over the country).

A free society can’t tolerate the existence of a rogue agency that not only has no respect for the law, but no respect for the nation in which it committed a war crime 31 years ago.