The Trump administration’s push to merge the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives with the Drug Enforcement Agency received a cool reception from members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham telling Attorney General Pam Bondi that the idea “makes no sense” to him.
Kansas Senator Jerry Moran, who serves as chairman of the powerful committee, was the first to push back against the proposal during today’s hearing on the DOJ’s proposed budget. He told Bondi that he’s heard concerns from both law enforcement and Second Amendment groups, who raise different and compelling objections.
“State and local law enforcement officials in my home state, who depend upon ATF’s NIBIN (National Integrated Ballistic Information Network) to develop critical intelligence on crime guns,” are among those who’ve reached to Moran to express their disapproval.
“I’ve also heard serious concerns from Second Amendment advocates,” Moran added, saying “it’s been fairly raised about the propriety of associating firearms, a constitutionally protected right, with the truly evil things such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, and Mexican cartels.”
Senator @LindseyGrahamSC just TORCHED the ATF-DEA merger proposal:⤵️
“The budget you proposed will be reworked… This whole [ATF] DEA thing, I don’t know who is thinking about that, but it just makes ZERO sense to me.”
🔥🔥🔥 https://t.co/3gWHfve9a7 pic.twitter.com/iUsgloSE2K
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) June 25, 2025
I’d say that fentanyl isn’t “evil”, especially when its used to help relieve the pain of people who’ve undergone surgery or are in the last throes of their fight with cancer, but I understand and agree wholeheartedly with Moran’s broader point. Bondi told a House committee earlier this week that merging the agencies makes sense because “guns and drugs go together”, which is untrue and unhelpful to those of us fighting to secure and strengthen our fundamental right to keep and bear arms.
That’s a point also raised by the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Larry Keane on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co. The NSSF, along with 2A organizations like Gun Owners of America and Firearms Policy Coalition, have been vocal in their opposition to the proposed merger. As FPC stated on Tuesday:
The DOJ’s dangerous proposal would consolidate the ATF and DEA into an authoritarian “super-agency” with the combined powers to wage the failed war on drugs and enforce unconstitutional federal gun control laws against all Americans, not just violent criminals and drug cartels. By merging the ATF’s firearms enforcement authority into the DEA, the DOJ is effectively equating peaceable American gun owners with drug cartels, turning millions of law-abiding citizens—as well as their constitutionally protected weapons—into co-equal targets of a militarized federal enforcement regime.
While gun control activists might be cheered by Bondi lumping guns and drugs together, many anti-gun groups have also come out in opposition to the plans to merge DEA and ATF. Giffords policy director Lindsay Nichols, recently told Roll Call that the merger “would threaten the enforcement of federal firearms laws” and would “weaken efforts to stop gun traffickers, straw purchasers, and gun dealers who are breaking the law.”
I asked Keane who exactly is in favor of the merger at this point, and beyond Bondi the budget planners in the Trump adminstration, he couldn’t come up with anyone. It’s rare for gun control groups and Second Amendment organizations to agree on anything, and though their rationale may differ, it’s significant that neither side of the gun debate is eager for the ATF to get folded into the DEA.
The ATF is in desperate need of reform, but those efforts are already underway. With Moran, Graham, and others going public with their opposition, hopefully we’ll soon see the DOJ back off this bad idea and stick with cleaning up the ATF from within instead.
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