early 2013 in response to the mass shooting of 20 schoolchildren and six educators in Newtown, Conn.

But Jones left on March 31 to take a job at the National Football League. Brandon, then Jones’s deputy, has been serving as acting director since. Over the summer, the administration showed signs that it planned to nominate Brandon to the position permanently, but it later reversed course.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, who would oversee any ATF confirmation hearings, has stepped up his criticism of the agency recently. On Sept. 14, he wrote to Lynch expressing concerns about whistleblowers’ claims of sexual harassment at the bureau -- and their accusation that Brandon and Jones were both aware of the allegations.

Grassley said on Wednesday that such issues would definitely come up inenforcement veteran to be the nation's top cop in the fight against illegal guns,” said Arkadi Gerney, a senior vice president of the Center for American Progress who has also advocated folding the ATF into the FBI. “If the Republican-led Senate, which claims to want to enforce the laws on the books, fails to confirm the nominee -- well, then it's on them."

The ATF has long suffered something of an identity crisis, growing out of an agency first created by the Treasury Department to collect taxes on tobacco and liquor in the late 1800s. Guns became part of the portfolio in the 1930s, and they became its main focus in the second half of the 20th century. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the ATF moved under the umbrella