ATF/DEA merger: a good idea?

It is an article of faith among anti-liberty/gun cracktivists that the gun industry is unregulated. Why, one can walk into a gun store and five minutes later walk out with a machinegun! Not only that, it's impossible to sue gun makers, which is why Joe Biden's handlers had him mangle so many teleprompter readings demanding the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It's a genuinely bi-partisan act of Congress designed to prevent anti-liberty/gun cracktivists from suing gun makers out of business for the criminal misuse of their products by unknowable third parties. It's a common tort law principle that, for example, prevents lawsuits against auto makers for accidents caused by reckless drivers.

Democrats have long used the ATF to produce constitutionally dubious prosecutions against manufacturers, retail dealers and individual citizens. It was the ATF, protected by then-AG Eric Holder, that was responsible for the Fast And Furious "gun-walking" scandal that allowed a great many guns to be transferred to Mexican drug cartels. That lunacy cost at least one Border Patrol agent his life and surely caused other deaths.

There have been previous attempts to merge the ATF into other federal agencies, but all have failed, apparently because the other agencies didn't want them, so poor was the ATF's reputation. So, the ATF has swerved between being at least somewhat honest public servants to being anti-Second Amendment hitmen for Democrat politicians and gun haters.

But now the Trump Administration is floating a merger between the ATF and DEA: . . . .