Only On 6: ATF Director Discusses Efforts To Crack Down On Crimes Involving Firearms

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has one mission: to protect people in America from violent crime.

The ATF said that's getting tougher since thousands of people are shot and killed by criminals every year.

Steven Dettelbach was appointed by President Joe Biden last summer to run the ATF.

He is passionate about helping local agencies like Tulsa Police and the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office solve crimes involving illegal guns. One way they do that is with their Crime Gun Intelligence Centers.

"Crime gun intelligence is taking a crime gun and getting all the evidence from the outside, the inside, what comes out of the front and what comes out of the back, the spent shell casing," said Steven Dettelbach, ATF Director.

Those spent shell casings found at crime scenes get entered into a National ballistics database, called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network or NIBIN, for short.

It lets officers and agents run a history of a gun that's used in a crime to see all the places it may have been used. It's like a gun's personal criminal history, which could lead them to the bad guy.

"All of these things let us focus our law enforcement resources on the most violent trigger pullers who are terrorizing our community," said Dettelbach.

He said it's a small percentage of the population committing the most violent crimes and their focus is taking the worst of the worst off the streets.

He said around 50,000 people are killed in gun violence every year. He said some of those cases make the headlines, but many more of them don't. However, they all matter just as much.

"Families are celebrating the holidays without a loved one at the table. Each one of those cases is important," Dettelbach said.

He said it's easy to get callous to all the stories about violent crime, both locally and nationally, and to start thinking there's nothing that can be done.

He said people need to say violence against innocent people is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. He and his agents are committed to working with local agencies to stop it.

"That's the thing that scares me the most is somehow folks just give up. They'll accept that they gotta send their kids to a school in a dangerous place or can't sit on their porch or can't walk around the block. That's unacceptable and it's un-American," Dettelbach said.