Acting ATF Director (and FBI Director) Kash Patel has only been on the job a few weeks, and honestly, we’ve yet to see many major changes within the agency (at least publicly), but that isn’t stopping anti-gun Democrats in the House from demanding his removal.

Earlier this month the Democrats on the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force sent a written temper tantrum to Donald Trump urging him to fire Patel, or at least force him out of his role as the interim head of the agency. Trump, of course, never bothered to reply to the missive, so Rep. Dan Goldman tried again on Tuesday to put public pressure on the president. 

Under Trump 1.0, gun homicides rose 34%.

Now he’s appointed @FBIDirectorKash, a reckless opponent of commonsense gun laws, to head the agency protecting us from gun violence–the ATF.

I joined @RepThompson in urging Trump to reverse this dangerous pick and protect our families. pic.twitter.com/34Sz5zNGds

— Rep. Dan Goldman (@RepDanGoldman) March 18, 2025

What Goldman doesn’t say, of course, is that violent crime and homicides declined for most of Trump’s first term. It wasn’t until 2020 when crime (including homicides) spiked across the country, and that was largely due to two factors: the closure of courts and the emptying of jails because of the COVID pandemic; along with the riots, civil unrest, and push to defund law enforcement that erupted after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in the summer of that year. Those factors were largely beyond Trump’s control, and in many cases a direct result of local Democratic politicians foisting their dangerous policies on the public, so it’s revisionist history for Goldman, Thompson, and the other members of the House gun control group to pin the blame on Trump. 

“As you are aware, ATF is the lead law enforcement agency responsible for addressing the gun violence epidemic in our country. At a time when gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in the United States, it is unconscionable that someone without experience fighting crime, responding to mass shootings or confronting domestic terrorism has been named as ATF’s Acting Director,” the Democrats wrote.

We debunked the claim that “gun violence” is the leading cause of death for children and teens just yesterday, so I won’t repeat myself here. Suffice to say, however, that the Democrats’ claims are the result of fuzzy math and fudging numbers. As for their claims that Patel lacks law enforcement experience, they’re simply lying about his background. Patel has served as both a public defender and DOJ prosecutor, which gives him a unique and valuable perspective on the innumerable ATF regulations and federal statutes that can trip up lawful gun owners. It’s not his job history that makes him unacceptable to groups like Giffords and the anti-gun Democrats who signed the letter to Trump. It’s his support for the Second Amendment and his previous comments about the need to rein in the ATF’s abuses of its authority, which are the some of same reasons why Trump named him acting ATF Director in the first place. 

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