ATF Director Steven Dettelbach plans to resign just days before Donald Trump retakes office.
On Thursday, the ATF told The Reload that Dettelbach submitted his resignation to President Joe Biden with an effective date of January 18th, 2025. That is the first official confirmation of Dettelbach’s plan since he told The New York Times he planned to step down before the end of Biden’s term. The agency did not say who would replace Dettelbach in the interim but described his resignation as a normal part of the transition between presidential administrations.
“As is typical in a transition, and consistent with the memorandum sent to all presidential appointees on Dec. 19, Director Dettelbach has rendered his resignation to President Biden effective January 18, 2025,” Kristina Mastropasqua, ATF’s Chief of Public Affairs, told The Reload. “Leading the courageous and incredible men and women of ATF has been the greatest honor of his professional life.”
Dettelbach’s resignation marks the end of just the second period in which a Senate-confirmed permanent director led the ATF and puts the agency’s leadership back into limbo. It comes as disturbing New Year’s Day attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas, which both involved firearms and improvised explosives, underscore the important role the polarizing agency is meant to play in national law enforcement.
His resignation also marks the official end of Biden’s attempt to use the ATF as the primary body for enacting new gun restrictions he couldn’t get through Congress. While Biden nominated Dettelbach as a more muted alternative to his failed initial nominee, he still shared many of Biden’s policy preferences on guns and aggressively pursued the rules restricting pistol braces, home gun building, and used gun sales handed down by the president.
Donald Trump, who opposed Biden’s executive gun actions and promised to fire Dettelbach during his successful Presidential campaign, will have the opportunity to try to replace him with a new permanent director. Although, given the difficulty he and other presidents have had since the position became Senate confirmable in 2006, that will likely be a tall task.
In his resignation letter, which was first published by YouTuber Mr. GunsNGear and independently obtained by The Reload, Dettelbach thanked Biden and touted his record.
“It was the honor of my professional career to serve at ATF in your Administration. As you said when nominating me to be ATF Director, ‘The mission of this agency isn’t controversial. It’s public safety,'” he wrote. “I have now seen the brave and talented people at ATF live out your words for years. And we have realized results.”
He claimed the ATF helped to alleviate the historic spike in crime coming out of the pandemic during his tenure in office.
“As I leave ATF, the country has experienced two years of historic decreases in the violent crime rates, including drops in firearms related crime. That progress did not occur by accident. The heroic, talented and hard-working people at ATF, along with our many partners, fought hard and risked everything to gain that ground. And Americans are better off for it.”
Gun-rights advocates rejected that characterization, though. Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, painted Dettelbach’s tenure as one that further politicized the agency.
“That’s one less person Trump will have to fire after he takes office,” Gottlieb, who backed Trump and has consulted with the transition team at Mar-a-Lago in the wake of the election, said in a statement “and it is one less gun prohibition lobbyist on the government payroll.”
In addition to overseeing the implementation of Biden’s expansive rules restricting certain firearms and accessories, most of which federal courts have blocked, Dettelbach also spearheaded an initiative to crack down on licensed gun dealers. Under Biden’s “Zero-Tolerance” policy, Dettelbach and the ATF have revoked the highest number of dealer licenses in more than 20 years. That garnered him praise from gun-control advocates, who characterized the crackdown as necessary for public safety, but also put him at odds with the gun industry, who argued many of the revocations were due to minor clerical mistakes.
“For four years, the Biden-Harris administration has waged war on gun owners and the Second Amendment, with Dettelbach leading an ATF that helped make it happen,” he said. “The next ATF director must be someone who recognizes law-abiding gun owners as allies, not enemies in the fight against crime, which is a battle we all want to win.”
Trump has not named a nominee for the position. During his first term, the agency was run entirely under acting directors, largely because the Senate rejected his first nominee, Chuck Canterbury, and he never offered up a second. Gottlieb said the next director must take an entirely different approach to enforcing the nation’s gun laws.
“We are hopeful the next ATF director will straighten the record by telling Congress, the media and the gun prohibition lobby that modern semiautomatic rifles are not ‘weapons of war,’ and that there is not, and never was, a ‘gun show loophole,'” he said. “The next ATF director should know how to disassemble a pistol instead of trying to regulate it out of existence. He should lobby Congress for funds to revive restoration-of-rights procedures, and stop harassment of lawful, small business firearms retailers. He should be someone willing to visit a gun show rather than shut it down.”
Dettelbach didn’t offer up a potential successor candidate in his resignation letter. Still, he said he hopes Trump can get a permanent director through the process because he believes the agency is better served with consistent leadership.
“I believe very strongly that the president needs to appoint a permanent director,” he told The Times. “Republicans control everything at the moment, and their inclination has been to cut. I think having a permanent director gives ATF a stronger voice in everything related to the budget, and other things that come up.”
He also thanked Biden for appointing him to the role.
“Thank you for the privilege of calling the men and women of ATF my colleagues—and calling you my President,” he told Biden in the closing of his resignation letter.
