BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is today calling on Congress to block funding for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in the Fiscal Year 2024 budget until Democrats and federal bureaucrats publicly recognize Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, and stop their attacks on legal gun ownership.

CCRKBA issued its call to eliminate funding as the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is preparing for a hearing Thursday on “ATF’s Assault on the Second Amendment: When is Enough Enough?” The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in the House Rayburn Office Building.

“We’ve seen attacks on Second Amendment rights under previous Democrat presidents,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “but the Biden administration has pulled out all the stops. Joe Biden has publicly declared his desire to ban modern semiautomatic rifles and 9mm pistols, the most popular firearms in the nation. Millions of honest citizens own semiautomatic rifles for all kinds of uses, including home defense, competition, predator control, recreational shooting and hunting, and they have never harmed anyone. Likewise, millions of men and women own and use 9mm pistols for personal and home protection, training, target shooting, competition, business protection, and other legitimate uses.

“But under Joe Biden,” he continued, “the ATF has been weaponized against law-abiding citizens, and his budget proposal includes $1.9 billion for the agency to expand operations and increase regulation of the firearms industry.

“Clearly,” Gottlieb said, “Biden and the Democrats have decided that American gun owners are their enemy. They are scrambling to restrict the Second Amendment rights of tens of millions of citizens whose only offense is that they want to exercise their right to keep and bear arms. Last week, the president signed an executive order to create even more restrictions. Where does this stop? 

“The only way to derail this obsession,” he stated, “is for House and Senate Republicans to send a message to the White House and Capitol Hill Democrats by refusing to fund the agency Biden wants to unleash on law-abiding Americans. This war on the Second Amendment must stop now.”