Thanks for note. However, not only is executive branch constitutionally required to faithfully make sure that all laws are faithfully executed as evidenced by Section 3 of Article II, but also consider the following. Regardless of which branch of federal government that ATF belongs to, the Supreme Court has clarified in general that powers not delegated to the federal government expressly via the Constitution are prohibited.
From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]. United States v. Butler, 1936.
Also, regardless what FDR's activist justices wanted everybody to believe about the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause powers when they wrongly decided Wickard v. Filburn in Congress's favor in 1942, the justices wrongly ignored that a previous generation of justices had clarified that the states have never delegated to the feds to the feds to regulate intrastate commerce.
State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added]. Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
So if the ATF is regulating intrastate commerce in any way, then they have no constitutional authority to do so.
Thank You for that post and depressing reality. I think you might be my daughter in law school? She is a real facts in law kinda gal. You can’t ask for the salt at our chrismas dinner table without my daughter researching salt distribution accross seating lines and it’s legal case precident.
Liberals love to run to the Fourteenth Amendment to justify expanding state power, but when conservatives issue opinions such as Lochner v. New York (which struck down socialist "maximum work week" laws), they start crying that the court is promoting an economic theory. (I've always found it interesting that one of the greatest legal minds in American history, Robert Bork, has also criticized Lochner (p. 22), as I think that state laws which try to regulate informed consensus between two parties inherently infringe on a right to property and should be overturned by a federal court.)