Exercising the Right
New ATF Rule Might Ban Private Gun Sales
The New York Post reported on January 31 about a new threat from the Biden administration that has the potential to ban the private sale of handguns. Those are the claims emanating from the nonprofit watchdog Empower Oversight, which, according to its website, is focused on “oversight of government and corporate wrongdoing.”
Empower Oversight president Tristan Leavitt posted a series of messages on X about a proposed rule from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that might require background checks on almost all gun sales. Leavitt informed his followers that, based on information from “whistleblowers within ATF that at the direction of the White House, ATF has drafted a 1,300-page document to justify a rule effectively banning the private sale of firearms…. Such a sweeping rule with the effect of banning private sales would clearly violate the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which declares that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’”
Gun-rights advocates are not taking this lying down, and Empower Oversight has already sent a Freedom of Information Act request to both the Justice Department and the ATF to obtain any information about the plan, including any communications between the White House and the ATF. Background checks are already mandated for sales by federally licensed firearms dealers, but the concern over this rule is how it might broaden who would be considered a firearms seller. Historically, the federal background-check requirement has applied only to firearms sellers who had “the principal objective of livelihood and profit,” but it is possible that the proposed rule will apply the requirement to gun transfers within a family, as well, which previously were excluded. If the regulation is adopted, it would most likely not survive challenges before the Supreme Court, whose current makeup has issued rulings favorable to the Second Amendment.
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