Category: Some Red Hot Gospel there!
No one makes the case that it’s time to end the ATF better than the ATF.
Rather than allowing the agency to continue on its own or merging it with the DEA as has been recently discussed, President Donald J. Trump should put the agency out of our misery before its agents kill yet another innocent American or violate someone else’s civil rights.
If action is not taken, more innocent Americans will die, that much is certainly true. In fact, it’s guaranteed.
No other federal law enforcement agency has a bloodier history, and it is the blood of innocent Americans that will forever taint the ATF.
In fact, killing innocent Americans in their homes is what the ATF appears very willing to do.
They did it on February 28, 1993, at a small religious compound outside of Waco, Texas, and ATF Agent Tyler Cowart did it on March 19, 2024, when he shot and killed a 53-year-old Arkansas airport executive who had never committed a crime.
Those responsible for ATF’s atrocities have never been held accountable.
Other federal law enforcement agencies don’t have this problem. If a DEA or an FBI agent uses excessive force their career would be over, but not at the ATF, where innocent blood on an agent’s hands doesn’t seem to matter.
The ATF cannot even admit its agents made a mistake, not even at Waco, where 76 Branch Davidians including 20 children were killed, along with ATF Special Agents LeBleu, Williams, Willis and McKeehan.
To this day, the ATF is still trying to justify its Waco carnage.
The following was taken from the ATF’s “Remembering Waco” webpage.
“A subsequent investigation by the Departments of Treasury and Justice regarding the actions of law enforcement agents during the siege determined that some tactics and decisions were poorly executed; and certain actions by ATF were criticized.
However, the September 1993 U.S. Department of Treasury Administrative Review concluded: “…the agency is made up of dedicated, committed and experienced professionals, who have regularly demonstrated sound judgment and remarkable courage in enforcing the law. ATF has a history of success in conducting complex investigations and executing dangerous and challenging law enforcement missions.
That fine tradition, together with the line agents’ commitment to the truth and their courage and determination has enabled ATF to provide our country with a safer and more secure nation under law,” the ATF claims.
This is ludicrous.
The agency admits that “certain actions by ATF were criticized,” but quickly adds “ATF has a history of success,” and agents have a “commitment to the truth,” as well as “courage and determination.”
The ATF looks at the Waco siege – which killed 80 Americans – as if it was misjudged.
This is toxic.
With an inability to correctly evaluate the massive series of errors that occurred at Waco, which led to the longest gunfight on American soil since the Civil War, how can the ATF ever be trusted to judge an agent’s actions again?
Unfortunately, there are plenty more ATF actions still waiting to be rightfully judged.
- Patrick “Tate” Adamiak, a former U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class, is serving the third year of a 20-year sentence in federal prison, even though he did nothing wrong. Recently released documents show that the ATF was screwed after they stormed into Adamiak’s home based solely on an informant’s misinformation. Agents found nothing illegal, so they created fake charges.
- Mark “Choppa” Manley was a gun owner, a gun collector and a Second Amendment advocate who had more than 70 legally owned firearms stored in a gun safe until an ATF SWAT team stormed his Baltimore home and threw concussion grenades at his children. The Manley family was never told why they were mistakenly targeted by the ATF.
- Russell Fincher was a high school history teacher, a Baptist pastor and a part time gun dealer who also coached Little League in his hometown of Tuskahoma, Oklahoma. In 2023, seven vehicles roared up to his home and disgorged a dozen ATF agents wearing tactical gear, armed with AR-15s. They yelled and screamed at Fincher for two hours until he agreed to stop selling firearms.
- Bryan Malinowski was shot and killed inside his Arkansas home by ATF Agent Tyler Cowart. Unfortunately, the ATF has yet to be held accountable for killing Malinowski just 16 months ago.
The cases, and there are many more, clearly show that the ATF cannot distinguish between a criminal and a legitimate gun owner, and this inability can result in the filing of false criminal charges and prison, like they did to Adamiak, or even death, as befell Malinowski.
That is the problem.
Law-abiding American gun owners would have no problem with an ATF that follows the law, only arrests bad guys and doesn’t kick down our doors or throw stun grenades at our children. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Bottom line: ATF’s 2,600 Special Agents deserve to be judged exactly as they judge us: They’re all guilty and they all need to go.
Hopefully, President Trump will make this happen before another innocent life is lost.
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A report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) shows that states with stricter control lead other states in adolescent firearm deaths.
NSSF based their findings on a June 2025 study published in the Journal for American Medical Association Pediatrics (JAMA Pediatrics).
The title of the study is, “Firearm Laws and Pediatric Mortality in the US,” and its authors categorized states into three groups, “Strict,” “Permissive” and “Most Permissive.” The authors then claimed, “…permissive firearm laws contributed to thousands of excess firearm deaths among children living in states with permissive policies; future work should focus on determining which types of laws conferred the most harm and which offered the most protection.”
Establishment media outlets like the New York Times, ABC News, and CNN ran with the authors’ claim, leaving NSSF to note that the outlets never asked why the “study’s authors manipulate the data by using estimated, predicted and crude-rate adjusted figures instead of analyzing the real incidents.” NSSF responded by noting that a simple look at raw Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data tells a completely different story.
According to the NSSF:
Rebuilding the data set using the same time, population and mechanism parameters established by the authors using CDC’s data tells a different story entirely.
The eight states the authors rated as “Strict” and having the most restrictive gun control laws – California, New York, Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey – on average saw more unadjusted adolescent firearm mortality than the 11 “Permissive” and 30 “Most Permissive” states.
“The firearm industry isn’t deterred or distracted by biased studies that push political narratives,” NSSF added. “For decades, the firearm industry has brought forward effective and proven firearm safety initiatives to keep firearms beyond the reach of those who should never have them. That includes unsupervised children.”
(File this one under the “No Shit Sherlock file” Grumpy)
If American nurses are our “Angels of Mercy” — and they are, believe me; especially military nurses — then our candy-striped teenage hospital volunteers must be the cherubim, God bless ’em.
They’re pretty much restricted to fetch-and-carry work in hospitals today, but still, I think their mere presence has more than a dollop of medicinal benefit. Sometimes, just pulling smiles, even an occasional painful laugh, out of badly hurt patients seems to be their sole duty, and they’re certainly good at it!
One such candy-striper we’ll call Candy here, almost caused me to split my stitches. I could describe her more, but let’s just say with her red hair, freckle-flecked face and baby-blue eyes, I mistook her for one of my own Red Squad girls when I came out of a morphine fog and peeped her for the first time.
On one of Candy’s many “hangin’ out” visits, my surgeon had left my medical records on a side table in my room. The cherub was leaning on it when she commented that my file was the fattest she’d ever seen. I told her it was sort of a chronicle of “Life’s Lessons Learned”; representing the curriculum of the University of Hard Knocks. She smiled impishly, worth sixty mg’s of morphine, easy, patted it and said, “Gee, you musta learned a ton, Mister Connor! Can you graduate now?”
I splurted, ’sploded, knocked something over and people came runnin’. Good question, though … can I graduate?
Yeah; I’ve learned some things, both esoteric and mundane, and the learning, while free of the usual tuition and lab fees, often came at the cost of blood, pain and/or embarrassment.
Here’s one: If you lose blood an’ suffer pain from any given social encounter, at least try not to embarrass yourself too! Not in front of your mates, anyway. That does nothin’ but make the sting of a wound worse. The sorta-corollary is, if a deadly incident ends with you bein’ deeply embarrassed but not grievously wounded, don’t give it a second thought — as long as you learn rom it.
In a fight for your life, You don’t shoot a man until you think he’s dead — You’ve got to shoot him until HE thinks he’s dead. Please hold any sanctimonious complaints about this one until you have fought men who, despite wounds which ought to drop a grizzly like a box ’o rocks, keep on determinedly killing your comrades and tryin’ their dangdest to kill you.
I’ve learned there are millions of men who are absolutely, crazily willing to shed blood, draw blood and die for their cause, however weird, ridiculous and twisted it is. But thank God, there are very few of them willing to put the necessary effort into the training it takes to be proficient at that enterprise. About training, I’ve learned that Amateurs train until they get the drill right; professionals train until they can’t get it wrong.
I’ve learned that real fights rarely resemble fighting scenes filmed by Hollywood, but lotsa times you’ll wind up fighting guys whose only weapons-handling training apparently came from the movies.
If you go up against a guy who shoots using the “Gangsta Grip” — over his head, gun horizontal on its port side, sorta pushing his rounds toward you with jerky arm movements — just thank Hollywood for his poor technique right after you ding him.
I’ve learned the currency of some countries makes much better toilet paper than their toilet paper, and using it that way actually costs less than buying their toilet paper, if there is any available. Usually, there’s not. Continuing on this potty-path, I’ve also learned that when mortar rounds have you bracketed and the only hole in the pool-table plain you’re on is a pit toilet, Yes, you can do it … Just jump in. See “embarrassment” above.
This naturally leads to what I’ve learned about digging in under fire. Did you know that anytime you think you’re excavating at peak efficiency, your digging speed can triple when the first round impacts? Then triple again between the second and third “incomings?”
Bugs & Bolt-Cutters
I’ve learned satellite intel is good, like, it can read a license plate from space. But only human intel can tell you what the fatcat in the back seat is sayin’. And no satellite can tell a mobile field kitchen from a mobile biological-weapons lab, but a fire team of Marines with a set of bolt-cutters can.
I’ve learned if you’re anywhere roughly between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and you find a natural source of water which appears clean, clear and free of bugs, don’t drink from it! If even the bugs won’t bathe in it, it’ll probably kill you. You’re better off with water that looks like bug soup.
Here’s another piece of wisdom about waterholes which somebody might have chucked a canister of cyanide into: Hoofprints both arriving and departing don’t mean squat. Track ’em away from that hole at least 500 meters, ’cause that’s where you might find ’em dead. Go thirsty, guys.
And finally, from me, for now: Never be in a shot-up all-concrete building when it falls down.
Hey, Tony! This just needs a little Bundy Rum, eh, mate?
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