Partnership to get guns off the street between Atlanta, ATF, and others is saving lives, mayor says

ATLANTA — Atlanta leaders say a partnership with the federal government is succeeding in getting illegal guns off the streets and making communities safer.

Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne visited the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lab on Wednesday.

Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum told him that this lab helps make Atlanta streets safer with the role it plays in tying guns to trigger pullers, arsonists to fires, and more.

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That’s part of why he and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens met with the head of ATF for the whole United States and the ATF Atlanta Special Agent in Charge.

“Lives are being saved by this partnership. You think about how many illegal guns have been brought off the street,” Dickens said. “We brought 3,200 illegal guns off the streets last year. That’s through APD hard work as well as the various agencies like ATF that we’ve worked with.”

Meeting with Dickens and Schierbaum was the Director of the ATF Steven Dettelbach and ATF Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Ben Gibbons.

“(We were) talking about the fact that we have to deal with Glock switches and illegal firearms conversion devices which are turning semi-automatic weapons into machine guns all over this country including here in Atlanta, creating a huge public safety problem and a huge officer safety problem,” Dettelbach said. “And talking about the fact that there are drug dealers and criminal organizations out there that are terrorizing good people.”

“What we’ve done in the past year is to be the best partner that we could be,” Gibbons said.

Schierbaum said ATF’s help on initiatives like the Operation Heatwave gang crackdown and using ATF ballistics expertise to go through a backlog of seized guns to try and link them to crimes have been important as Atlanta experienced a 21 percent decrease in homicides in 2023 compared to the previous year.

“The ATF has been a strong partner since day one in our gangs, drugs, and guns focus,” Schierbaum said.

He said the mayor thanked ATF for its significant role in investigating arsons linked to opposition to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center project.

“We’ve been talking with issues about the series of arsons that you know have plagued this community that ATF is helping to work with Atlanta police and prosecutors to solve,” Dettelbach said.

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The ATF director pleaded for gun owners to secure their weapons.

“If you go into a mall and you leave your gun under your front seat and it gets stolen, nobody’s taking that gun to go hunting. That gun is going straight to the street. It’s being used to hurt or kill somebody,” Dettelbach said.

“I feel like we’ve made an impact, were making an impact but the impact can be greater right until we have zero homicides, firearms, illegal guns being used by gang members. That’s the impact that I’m looking for,” Gibbons said.

Schierbaum said many of the car break-ins in metro Atlanta are carried out by gang members looking for guns, so gun owners need to secure their weapons to keep other people safe.

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