It’s more than a little ironic that the federal law enforcement agency charged with regulating alcohol is also the one most likely to drive me to drink.

The ATF has engaged in so many sketchy things that I’ve long since lost track of them all. I’m pretty good and remembering stuff I wrote about, but their list of problematic behavior has gotten so long that a copy of War and Peace looked at it and thought it was a little lengthy.

And it’s not ending with the Trump administration taking office, either.

It seems that Lee Williams over at The Gun Writer found that agents were bragging about their brand-new suppressors.

Why do ATF agents need new suppressors for their ARs? No one was willing to answer this simple question, not the private company making the silencers and certainly not the ATF.

However, ATF agents themselves were discussing the new silencers on a website they falsely believed was totally private.

“We are getting new suppressors. They are currently being rolled out to the field,” one ATF agent wrote on the ATF Association Facebook page, which only allows ATF agents to join.

Another commenter on the same page said the ATF’s new suppressors are made by HUXWRX Safety Co., and that they are “upper lever” and “good cans.”

The new HUXWRX suppressors can cost from $1,200 to $1,300 a piece, according to the company’s website.

The HUXWRX Safety Co. (formerly OSS Suppressors) did not want to talk either. Company staffers did not respond to messages left on their website, emails or messages left for their spokesperson.

However, the ATF actually commented on-the-record, although it took a week for them to email one quote, and they didn’t say much.

“We can confirm that suppressors were provided to qualifying agents in the Criminal Investigation Occupation Series 1811 for health and safety due to the extensive training and quarterly firearms qualifications they must complete. For operational purposes, ATF does not comment on specific firearms used nor the number of firearms held,” ATF’s Public Affairs Division said in an email.

The ATF’s Criminal Investigation Occupation Series 1811 are agents “responsible for planning, conducting, and managing investigations related to alleged or suspected violations of federal criminal laws.”

They still didn’t say much after Williams asked them for clarification, declining to actually answer any specific questions.

Now, it’s possible that they need these to protect agents’ hearing as they train. Of course, if they need them for a purpose like that, then why is it such a pain in the posterior for regular folks to get one, too? As it is, we have to file NFA paperwork and get permission to have a suppressor of our own, but our tax dollars are going toward buying them from the least useful federal law enforcement agency on the planet, and no one can really tell us why?

Yeah, I’m not a fan by any stretch of the imagination.

Especially when we have suppressors in the hands of the same agency behind such wonderful hits as Ruby Ridge and Waco, just two name two of the most famous failures.

Now, they can gun down women, children, and dogs much more quietly, I guess.

Maybe this is something that DOGE should look into.