‘This is not a partisan issue:’ ATF director Dettelbach talks the future of gun safety in the U.S.

NINA MOINI: Our top story this afternoon, today, public safety officials from across the country are gathering in downtown Minneapolis to talk about strategies for reducing violent crime. It's part of a summit hosted by the Justice Department, and one of the federal officials who's here in Minnesota for the summit is the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or the ATF. It's the agency responsible for enforcing federal gun laws, among other things.

Steven Dettelbach was appointed by President Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2022. He joins me now. Thanks for making time for us, Director.

STEVEN DETTELBACH: It's great to be here.

NINA MOINI: I'd like to start by talking a little bit about the summit that you're gathered here for. I understand it's bringing together law-enforcement officials, justice officials from different levels of government-- state, local, federal. Can you explain briefly how the ATF works with state and local law enforcement?

STEVEN DETTELBACH: Sure I can, and the summary of the answer is all the time, every day. It's part of every single thing we do. ATF is the federal agency, as you said, that focuses on only violent crime. We're the only federal agency that focuses only on violent crime.

And because, in our country and our Constitution, violent crime is always the subject, first and foremost, for state and local police departments and sheriff's departments, by its very definition, ATF has to be the most collaborative agency. Our mission is a mission that requires us to work hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder with local cops and deputies all over the country. We do that every day. And a lot of how we're structured is to try to support state and local law-enforcement efforts to drive down violent crime. And, really, Minneapolis has been one of the cities we've worked closest with over the last couple of years that I've been ATF director.

NINA MOINI: That's right. Can you tell me a little bit more about your working relationship right now with Minneapolis? I know there were other cities that you were focusing on even before.

STEVEN DETTELBACH: Well, this PSP conference is the national conference that focuses on a program that's given to a select group of cities where state, local, federal law enforcement, advocates, funding officials all work together to fight violent crime. And Minneapolis has really-- the fact that we're doing this here in the Twin Cities should tell you a lot about the importance of Minneapolis in that effort.

So I came here to announce earlier in my term as ATF director a huge gang indictment, for instance, that we did with the police here, with the US attorney's office-- Andy Luger was central in that-- with the sheriff's department, the indictment of the Highs Gang. And that was a gang where we literally took down 45 gang members, some of the most violent people in the community, due to our ability to collaborate and use cutting-edge ballistics technology to connect the dots.

So there's a bunch of shootings that had gone on all over the cities, and they seemed like separate events. But when you use the NIBIN system, the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network system, when you used advanced police techniques, you found out that they were just part of one or two gangs, people that were tied together. When you followed the gun and followed the evidence, you're able to do a big RICO case and, for the first time in the history of this city, using that RICO tool to prosecute violent criminal gang members.

NINA MOINI: I want to talk a little bit more about following the guns, as you say. During your time leading the ATF, the bureau has really stepped up oversight of gun sales, guns. Ghost guns, they're referred to without serial numbers or ones that people could assemble on their own with little other help. And this is something that Minneapolis and Minnesota in general has been struggling with, an uptick of seeing these involved in crimes as well. What have been some of your effective strategies, in your opinion, to try to quell this problem?

STEVEN DETTELBACH: Well, the problem posed and the threat posed by privately made firearms-- that's what they're technically called, but most people call them ghost guns-- is immense, and these are guns that are tailor made for criminals. Why? Because they're guns that you can sell to other people without a background check because they can just be made from a kit, right, or from a 3D printer, and they're guns that don't have serial numbers.

So when you're marketing to people who don't want to have a background check, when you're marketing to people who don't want to have a gun with a serial number, it does two things. Number one, unfortunately, it caters to people who don't want to get caught doing crimes with those guns. And number two, it makes the job of the police in catching the criminals who do shootings and murders much harder.

So what have we done? We have done the things we do for every kind of crime that we face at ATF. First, partnership, working with local law enforcement all over the country. We've named a privately made firearms coordinator to coordinate with local law enforcement in every single district in the country, including right here in the Twin Cities. We have done training to let our state and local partners understand how to identify and understand where these guns are coming from. We've done that right here. And then, of course, enforcement, the ability to go out and catch people together through what we call our Crime Gun Intelligence Centers-- to go out and catch people who are using these firearms to commit crimes and putting them away.

So it has to be all three. It has to be collaboration. It has to b education, and then it has to be enforcement to try and crack down on this problem.

NINA MOINI: I want to talk a little bit about some of the pushback and criticism against some of the steps that have been taken through the ATF during your time as director. Some of the challenges to, say, the ghost-gun rules and regulations have made it all the way to the Supreme Court for consideration. President-elect Trump and some Republican members of Congress have been pretty critical of the ATF's steps, in particular, to regulate gun dealers, saying that the agency has just gone too far by revoking licenses for small mistakes in record keeping, things like that. What's your response to some of the criticism that's out there, especially as the administration-- the next Trump administration gets ready to take over?

STEVEN DETTELBACH: Well, my job isn't to respond to criticism. My job is to respond to threats. And when I took over in this position after the pandemic, we had realized one of the largest spikes in violent crime in many, many, many years. People were getting murdered, killed. Gangs were out of control. Cartels were being armed, and homicide rates were up.

And so our job is to ask two questions about any measure, in my mind. One question is, Is it legal? of course. And then the second question is, is it going to save lives? And if something is legal and something is going to save lives, I think we have to think pretty seriously about doing it. It doesn't mean we always do it. It's up to policymakers to make some of those decisions. I'm in law enforcement, though, and if somebody gives me a tool and says it's going to save lives and tells me it's legal, I think we're going to be hard pressed just to ignore it.

NINA MOINI: Well, President-elect Trump has said that he would replace you as ATF director. I'm curious, what are your plans for the transition to the next administration? Would you hope to stay on if you were invited, or are you making other plans?

STEVEN DETTELBACH: Well, I haven't made any announcement about what I'm going to do, and I'm not going to do that here today. But I will tell you, in the normal course of events, it would be the normal thing for a new administration to come in and to pick its own ATF director, for the president to nominate that person, and for the Senate to consider that nomination. That wouldn't be anything unusual. ATF directors serve at the pleasure of the president. I was appointed by President Biden, and there's a new president, obviously, who's going to be taking office pretty soon.

NINA MOINI: All right, what do you-- bringing it back to today, what do you hope comes from this convening of so many different levels and agencies of law enforcement? What are you hoping to gain out of this Public Safety Partnership Summit?

STEVEN DETTELBACH: We have to keep going. We have identified-- I told you that when I started in this job, there was a violent crime spike. Over the last two years and now probably, hopefully, a third year, we've seen historic declines in the violent crime rate. Killings, down. Shootings, down. Massive enforcement efforts. ATF has increased the number of its investigations just in one year by 10%. That's hundreds and hundreds of extra investigations. Referrals to prosecutors, way up.

And we're seeing the results of that hard work. The crime rate is coming down. We cannot get complacent, and we can't let politics distract us from the hard work and important work of fighting violent crime. This is not partisan work. Putting bad guys, violent people in jail is something that ATF does and will continue to do no matter who the president is. But we need to make sure that ATF agents out there, the line agents out there on the streets risking their lives, have the support that they need, have the funding they need. This is not the time to defund ATF. This is the time for people to defend ATF.

NINA MOINI: I wanted to ask you about this as well before I let you go because it's another thing that we've struggled with here in Minnesota. I understand that in your background in law as an attorney and then a US attorney that you took some actions to try to ensure the safety of houses of worship. In the past couple of years, we've seen threats to synagogues, mosques, different places. And from the people that I've spoken with in those faith communities, they feel like there's been an uptick or they feel more afraid. I'm curious, from your perspective with the ATF, what would be helpful to try to keep these places of worship safer?

STEVEN DETTELBACH: Well, this is obviously an area that's the kind of crime that is the most un-American crime that somebody could imagine, right? This country was founded on the principle of people came across oceans and braved very dangerous conditions to be in a place where they could pray any way they wanted to pray if they wanted to pray.

And when people do violence against a house of worship, I tell people-- and I've done it for many years. You're right-- that you're not just attacking that house of worship, as horrible as that is. You are attacking the foundation of this country.

So when people in various religious communities come to me and ask me how to deal with this problem, there's a couple things. First of all, we don't want to create a culture of fear, but we do want to create a culture of caution. That's the way I sort of talk about it, which is that people are aware of their surroundings. They're aware of people who are coming and going, just to make sure that if they see something unusual, that they're communicating it.

And I think the second thing we need to do is we need to have that open line of communication between law enforcement and religious leaders, clergy or other lay leaders who are leading houses of worship. I visited the horrible site of the massacre in Pittsburgh, the Tree of Life massacre, and spoke with a lot of people there, and that model that they've taken now in that community of collaboration between law enforcement and clergy leaders before an incident happens is so crucial to protecting all the various communities.

And that applies whether you pray in a church, a mosque, a gurdwara, a synagogue, whatever it is. In this country, everybody is entitled to pray the way they want, and nobody should be attacking them.

NINA MOINI: Director Dettelbach, I appreciate you making time for Minnesota Now on your stop here in the state.

STEVEN DETTELBACH: It's great to be here. Thank you so much.

NINA MOINI: That was Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steven Dettelbach.