During a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC) questioned ATF Director Steven Dettelbach about the ATF's priorities.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Director Dettelbach, for being here the second time
00:07 in over a year and for your commitment to keeping our community safe.
00:14 As requested by the Department of Justice, the ATF recently reported that over a five-year
00:20 period from 2017 to 2021, 68,000 illegally trafficked firearms were distributed across
00:31 the United States by unlicensed dealers.
00:35 The Iron Pipeline, which we've discussed earlier, specifically refers to guns smuggled up the
00:41 I-95 corridor from the southern states to the Mid-Atlantic and New England.
00:48 It runs directly through my home state of North Carolina, which is one of the top destinations
00:55 for gun traffickers.
00:57 Now we wouldn't know this information, which directly impacts public safety in my state,
01:03 without the ATF's dedicated work to make data available to the public and to all of our
01:11 law enforcement agencies.
01:13 This data is a critical tool for local law enforcement to address gun trafficking.
01:19 I also want to highlight the implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which
01:26 as we've heard, is one of the most significant steps Congress has taken to reduce gun violence
01:33 in decades, giving law enforcement and prosecutors new means to hold gun traffickers accountable.
01:41 I also want to note that both of North Carolina's Republican senators voted for the Bipartisan
01:49 Safer Communities Act in the last Congress.
01:53 Building off this legislation is imperative, and it will take continued bipartisan consensus
02:00 to do so.
02:02 We've talked a little bit about the gun trafficking provisions in the Safer Communities Act, but
02:08 I want to broaden that a little bit and ask you how gun trafficking intersects with drug
02:15 trafficking, particularly fentanyl trafficking, and what ATF is doing to reduce not just gun
02:23 trafficking and gun violence, but the menace of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs.
02:30 I've been involved with prosecution since 1991, and one thing that has stayed the same
02:37 and unfortunately I'm sure will stay the same is that guns and drugs, illicit guns and drugs,
02:42 go together.
02:43 Gangs, cartels, individual dealers, they are armed often as a means of enforcing their
02:52 business practices, their unlawful criminal conduct, and punishing individuals who challenge
02:58 them, intimidating witnesses, you name it.
03:01 So these things go together.
03:03 With respect to fentanyl, that is also – it was true with crack, it's true with powder
03:08 cocaine, true with heroin, it's true with opioids, it's true with fentanyl.
03:13 And we worked alone and together with our partners on cases that involve narcotics trafficking
03:19 all the time for that reason.
03:21 Armed drug trafficking organizations are part of what ATF does.
03:25 Just earlier this month, ATF made a case that resulted in members of the Sinaloa cartel
03:32 going to jail for literally decades, I think one for life.
03:37 We are routinely seeing fentanyl dealers and organizations that are armed to the teeth
03:44 and that are threatening people's lives.
03:47 And so do you believe that the more we support efforts to stop gun trafficking, that will
03:55 also help in our efforts to stop drug trafficking?
03:59 I know it.
04:01 I'm going to ask you a fun question since I know it's been kind of a rough day.
04:07 If it was Christmas and you could be fully funded in the ways that you've requested,
04:13 what would be your top three priorities and how would that make our communities safer?
04:21 Since it's Christmas, can I get an extra one or two?
04:24 Absolutely.
04:25 You have 36 seconds.
04:26 We're the violent crime agency, so I think what I would start with is we know a strategy
04:33 that's working.
04:34 The crime gun intelligence strategy working with state and local law enforcement is working.
04:38 We have to scale it, right?
04:40 So we have 60 crime gun intelligence centers or so.
04:42 We put out, I think, an extra 10 in the last year.
04:45 I would put out crime gun intelligence centers.
04:47 I would try to stand them up in numerous other places.
04:51 Second would be to support them, we need better intel.
04:54 Crime gun intelligence is driven by a couple things, the National Integrated Ballistic
04:57 Information Network or NIBIN and crime gun tracing.
05:03 I would start, I would continue and ramp up our campaign to get sheriffs, to get chiefs,
05:09 to get law enforcement officers all around the country to fully participate in the NIBIN
05:14 and tracing free tools that we provide them.
05:19 And I think, gosh, it's so hard.
05:22 And the third, I would say, I think, you know, I would double and triple down on our RICO
05:29 Vicar gang strategy.
05:31 It's a very effective legal tool that puts into effect the crime gun intelligence.
05:37 Minneapolis case is a great example.
05:39 So they have 15, 20 shootings all around town.
05:42 They look totally unconnected.
05:44 Through the crime gun intelligence tools we provide, we're able to connect them together
05:48 and show that it's the highs, that's the name of the gang, one group that's responsible
05:52 for all of this.
05:54 And so then we put together a RICO case, which has extra teeth in order to make sure we're
05:59 taking down the whole organization.
06:01 So I think that would be my third.
06:03 Thank you for your service and I yield back.
06:05 I think it's interesting too that the director didn't mention body cameras, even though he
06:09 told us that they weren't wearing those because of budget cuts, but that didn't make his Christmas
06:13 list.
06:14 The time is now that--