In theory, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exists in part to enforce federal gun laws. Yeah, it enforces the laws on those other things, but gun laws are a big chunk of their mission.

The problem is that we spend a lot of time noting some of the big problems with the ATF. That includes their refusal to investigate the theft of a firearm from a gun store while also screwing over a sailor who they claimed had machine guns, only they weren’t any such thing.

But a raid of an allegedly armed felon with a fair number of guns by federal agents in Texas really looks bad for the ATF. Why? Because they weren’t involved at all.

A Katy man is in federal custody after a raid of three of his properties led agents to more than 50 firearms.

Michael Seery is charged with felon in possession of a firearm in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

The FBI Houston SWAT Team entered his home in the Ventana Lakes Subdivision around 6:00 a.m. Thursday, according to court records. Seery, his wife, and three children exited the house.

Agents noted finding 18 firearms of various makes and models.

Neighbors describe a street lined with federal agents wearing tactical gear.

Less than five miles from his home at Seery’s construction company’s office, court records say agents confiscated one firearm and a 3D printer with firearm accessory codes.

In an interview with Seery’s wife, she said her husband had someone bring 20-30 guns to their home from his office while they were out of town in mid-February, court records say.

“(His wife) told Seery the guns could not stay at the house, so on or about February 28, Seery rented a storage unit, and on March 1, 2025, Seery took the guns to the storage unit,” an affidavit filed in the case said.

Seery, a felon who was convicted of drug charges in 2011, also reportedly had his wife make straw purchases for him and has apparently admitted this to investigators.

Now, this entire raid seemed to center around the illegally possessed guns.

Where was the ATF?

Well, from what I can tell, busy taking credit for arrests they never made.

Lee Williams over at The Gun Writer covered this on Tuesday when he wrote about how the ATF tooted its own horn for over 22 arrests when they were really only the investigators on two of those, and those cases were small potatoes.

Instead, they claim credit for the work of local cops while mostly sitting around, answering the phone, and writing up charges for suspects they never actually saw.

Should the ATF be abolished, what will likely happen is that the ATF will get folded into the FBI to some degree or another. The best-case scenario is that the raid went down like this, with the FBI being the ones conducting it, because this is part of an effort to start phasing the ATF out of existence.

I’m just not overly hopeful that’s what’s going on.

But what seems pretty obvious to me is that there’s even less reason to keep the ATF around if the FBI is going to be doing their jobs for them. While there’s a lot of work to be done to preserve our gun rights that have nothing to do with the ATF’s existence and that the folding them into the FBI won’t address, the truth is that the FBI can trample our rights just as easily as the ATF, but might actually accomplish some of what they’re supposed to accomplish in the meantime rather than just taking credit for arrests made by local police and just ignoring actual gun thefts handed to them on a silver platter.