Talk:Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Skip to table of contents

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2: 100 days

The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to governmental regulation of firearm ownership; the social, historical and political context of such regulation; and the people and organizations associated with these issues, which has been designated as a contentious topic.

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

Law Enforcement

	Law portal This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Law Enforcement. Please Join, Create, and Assess.Law EnforcementWikipedia:WikiProject Law EnforcementTemplate:WikiProject Law EnforcementLaw enforcement articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Firearms Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Firearms, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of firearms on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FirearmsWikipedia:WikiProject FirearmsTemplate:WikiProject FirearmsFirearms articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

United States: Government Mid‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject U.S. Government (assessed as Low-importance).

Food and drink: Beer / Pubs / Spirits / Wine Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of food and drink related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Food and drinkWikipedia:WikiProject Food and drinkTemplate:WikiProject Food and drinkFood and drink articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Related taskforces:
/
	Beer portal This article is supported by WikiProject Beer (assessed as Low-importance).
	This article is within the scope of the Pub Task Force, a task force which is currently considered to be inactive.
	Drink portal This article is supported by WikiProject Spirits (assessed as Low-importance).
	This article is within the scope of Wines task force, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.

Beer WikiProject task list:

This list is transcluded from the tasks list page, to edit, click here

This is a list of single time tasks that need action. Once you have completed them, please remove them from the list.

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Stubs : Beer and brewery stub articles
Other : Add {{Portal|Beer}} to the See also section of high-relevance articles

Explosives High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Explosives, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Explosives on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ExplosivesWikipedia:WikiProject ExplosivesTemplate:WikiProject ExplosivesExplosives articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

Politics: American Low‑importance

	Politics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by American politics task force (assessed as Mid-importance).

Archives

Archive 1

Archive 2

This page has archives. Sections older than 100 days may be automatically archived by when more than 4 sections are present.

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 09:08, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Outdated statistics on employment, possibly others[edit]

Hey, I noticed that the statistic on unemployment was outdated, citing the statistics for 2013 when the ATF posted 2017 statistics. This article doesn't look like it is frequently updated, so it may need some basics in that regard. The annual budget is also out of date. The activities section also seems pretty skewed and could use a more neutral point of view, as has been noted since 2014.

Matthewdrago (talk) 03:04, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nice job. Maybe you could add the citation.Cassell04 (talk) 21:23, 9 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Date Discrepancy[edit]

Under the "Directors" section, Rex Davis is listed as ATF Director from 1970 to 1978, but the introductory sentence directly above states the bureau was formed in 1972. How can Davis be the director of a bureau before it exists? Is this a typographical error? If so, which date is wrong? The bureau's formation date or Davis's term? If someone with knowledge or expertise on the matter could adjust the date to resolve the inconsistency or insert a brief explanation as to why the dates do not match, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. 66.91.36.8 (talk) 23:00, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind. I found the relevant information in the "History" section and inserted a parenthetical explanation in the "Directors" section to clear up the confusion.

On a separate, but relatively trivial note, in the "Directors" section, when listing the terms of each ATF Director, why are some dates (the later ones) given with the month, day, and year, but others (the earlier ones) are only given in years (term start and end dates)? Wouldn't it be better to be consistent and give the dates in the same way for all director terms? Is it that there is a lack of source information, records, or documentation for the earlier directors' terms and records were better kept or at least more specific with later directors' terms? Because the list only goes as far back as the 1970s, I would expect the information (months and days for the earlier directors' terms) wouldn't be exceptionally difficult to find (as compared to say trying to verify the birth, death, or reign dates for King Tut). If anyone is up to the task, editing the earlier dates to include months and days so as to be consistent with the later dates, I think, would improve the article (albeit marginally). Just my opinion. Thank you.

I would do it myself but I'm not great at edits expanding the content of the article and citing the sources. I usually get a message telling me I did something wrong, so I just prefer to leave it to the experts. 66.91.36.8 (talk) 22:00, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Organizational Issue[edit]

In the 'Ruby Ridge Siege controversy' section, the second paragraph (starting with "On May 1, 1992, 50 ATF agents were summoned...") refers to events unrelated to Ruby Ridge. This paragraph would be more suited for placement under the previous section, '1972–2000'. 2601:147:4500:62F0:3DFD:20A2:751A:D38B (talk) 15:38, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]