Breitbart News was at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) when Robert Cekada was sworn in Monday, and he sat down with us afterward to talk about growing up hunting with his dad, owning numerous AR-15s, and valuing the importance of an armed citizenry.
Cekada’s parents immigrated from Yugoslavia and his exposure to firearms came from his father, who would take him target shooting and, eventually, along on hunting trips in Upstate New York.
The target shooting began in his youngest years when Cekada’s dad began taking him on hunts when he was 12 years of age.
Cekada said, “I had a Stevens single barrel 20 gauge shotgun that I started off with. He had his first double barrel shotgun which I still have… and we started out small game — hunting rabbit, pheasant, etc. — but it was more about being out in the woods with your dad. And getting out of the city and having a good ol’ time. He taught me how to clean a gun, how to do it safely, how to make sure that everything I did with that firearm had safety for myself, for my father, and others who would go hunting with us.”
He developed a love and respect for the things his father passed onto him and, in turn, passed them on to his son.
Cekada became a police officer in New York City in 1992, at which point he “got into handguns.” Besides expanding his horizon to include an appreciation for handguns, Cekada noted that those early years as an officer taught him the value of armed citizenry.
He talked about meeting many of his father’s friends, noting that some were hunters and others were not, but the one thing they had in common was that “they were living in fear in New York City at the time.”
Cekada said, “Crime was through the roof in New York City, Mayor Dinkins (D) was the mayor, a very nice man but there was no mantra to hold people accountable for violent crime.”
He was assigned to Harlem where he met “lots of great people living in really high crime areas, who were happy to see cops… who wanted to come out there and help make the place better. I can tell you what we never focused on during all that violence: we never focused on holding people that were legitimate gun owners or federal firearms licensees responsible for what the criminals were doing.”
Cekada again stressed there were “a lot of people living in fear in New York City, but it was so challenging to get a [permit to own a gun], a carry permit, or a target permit.” As a result, people went outside the legal framework to acquire guns, “not because they were trying to be criminals, but because they were afraid for themselves and their families.”
As we talked, it was clear that the first-hand experience of watching hardworking Harlem families treasure firearms for self-defense is something that remains at the forefront of Cekada’s mind and frames his view of the importance of Americans being armed.
Cekada’s work as a police officer led to him being part of a team working in partnership with the ATF and eventually working for the ATF itself. He has been with the ATF for 21 years.
He pointed out that he saw change in the ATF over time, a change so great that Cekada “was actually called out in a meeting and told that [he] should be ashamed… because [he] owned AR-15s.”
Cekada said, “I laughed [in response], because that was the only good option I had because, this person who said this to me, was an executive here at ATF. And, they said it was because of me and people like me that their children go through active shooter training at schools.”
He said he did not know what to say because the criticism of his AR-15 ownership came at a time when he had been in law enforcement for nearly 30 years.
Cekada told Breitbart News, “[I had been] risking my life in cities all over the country to keep their community and other communities safe” but that officials were willing to “wrap me up with violent offenders and say I should be ashamed of himself” because of a certain gun.
He made clear, “I don’t want anyone judging me based on the firearm that I own and associating me with criminal conduct” because of it.
Cekada pushed back against the pistol stabilizer brace rule when it began being floated within the ATF, and he told us, “The entire leadership team that is here [at the ATF] with me now was pushing back on the administration back then, saying this is not the area that we should be focused on, but we weren’t in a position to be able to stop it. We’re stopping it now.”
He added, “We are not spending our time on the things that someone wants to demonize. We are focused on the people that are actually committing crimes with a firearm, not the firearm itself. It’s the person that is committing the crime.”
As our time came to a close, we asked Cekada if there was one central thing he would like to communicate to gun owners. He responded, “I would tell the American gun owner to understand that ATF is in your corner.”
He continued, “We are here supporting the Constitution, and I will tell you who needs to worry about ATF: the criminals, gang members, cartel members, trans-national crime members.”
And to those “criminals, gang members, cartel members, and trans-national crime members,” Cekada said, “ATF is coming after you with the full force of the government.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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