The anti-gun mainstream media picked up word-for-word the article from The Associated Press covering a report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). That report, claimed the media chorus, said that more than half of all firearms illegally sold in the U.S. between 2017 and 2021 came from “unregistered” gun dealers.
The careless reader would conclude, without reading the fine print of the ATF’s report, “Firearms Trafficking Channels and Methods Used,” that half of all gun dealers are rogues, breaking the law at every turn, and therefore are at least partly responsible for America’s perceived wave of “gun violence.”
This is the message the Biden administration wanted to deliver, and its rogue agency was only too happy to deliver it.
AP reported that “more than 68,000 illegally trafficked firearms in the U.S. came through unlicensed gun dealers.” It defined “firearms trafficking” as “when guns are purposely moved into the illegal market for a criminal purpose or possession.”
This is impossibly opaque. How does the agency know when a firearm “is purposely moved”? How does it define “the illegal market” or determine “a criminal purpose or possession?” What is clear is that somehow more than half of gun dealers in America are responsible for the raging gun violence.
It doesn’t matter that this statement is impossible to understand logically, the message was delivered. Said AP: “The Biden administration has … proposed a rule that would require thousands more gun sellers to get licensed and run background checks.” Those thousands include those private citizens who still remain free to buy and sell firearms in what’s left of the private market in the United States. Those thousands, once “licensed,” would then fall under the agency’s increasingly authoritarian control.
On page two of the ATF report, one finds that 80 percent of the firearms the agency determined to have been “trafficked” illegally were sold and purchased privately and not through a licensed gun dealer. Nearly all of the others the ATF uncovered had been stolen!
Only 136 of the more than 134,000 licensed gun dealers (at the end of 2021) were found guilty of such illegal activity. That is just one-tenth of one percent of all dealers holding a Federal Firearms License (FFL).
And yet, those following the rules are the target of the Biden administration and its hench-agency, the ATF. As Larry Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), noted: “Instead of using the ATF as a government bureau to assist [licensed gun dealers] to stay within [its] regulations, President Biden and his ATF have turned it into a steel trap by which they snare firearm retailers to run them out of business.”
This is all part of the plan the White House publicly announced just months after Joe Biden took up residency in the Oval Office. From that announcement:
Establishing zero tolerance for rogue gun dealers that willfully violate the law:
Gun dealers across the country are regulated by federal law that is enforced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Dealers that fail to comply with their obligations under the law create risks for all of us.
Today, the Justice Department is announcing a new policy to underscore zero tolerance [emphasis added] for willful violations of the law by federally licensed firearms dealers that put public safety at risk.
Absent extraordinary circumstances that would need to be justified to the Director, ATF will seek to revoke the licenses of dealers the first time that they violate federal law by willfully 1) transferring a firearm to a prohibited person, 2) failing to run a required background check, 3) falsifying records, such as a firearms transaction form, 4) failing to respond to an ATF tracing request, or 5) refusing to permit ATF to conduct an inspection in violation of the law.
The attacks on gun dealers began shortly thereafter. One prominent target was Morehouse Enterprises, doing business in Valley City, North Dakota, as Bridge City Ordnance. The owner publicly complained about Biden’s “ghost gun” ban, and the ATF retaliated by conducting a deep search into the dealer’s records, hoping to find something — anything — to hang around its neck and justify canceling its FFL.
Another case showed clearly the arrogance of the ATF now that it has free rein to terrorize at will any gun dealer. The invasion by an ATF agent into Black Metal Firearms in Mesa, Arizona, perfectly illustrates the arrogance of an agency run amok. When ATF Agent Pamela Scott called on the owner, Dave Nagel, he thought it would be a routine visit.
He was wrong. Scott took advantage of her position as a rogue ATF agent and began to photograph, using her personal iPhone, more than 4,000 purchase records. When Nagel confronted her about her illegal photographing, the following conversation took place:
Nagel: “What are you doing?”
Scott: “It’s part of my investigation.”
Nagel: “A lot of our customers are concerned with you copying their personal information.”
Scott: “Sounds like your customers are just being paranoid.”
Said Nagel following the illegal copying: “She thought it was perfectly okay. She did it in front of customers. She was quite brazen about it. And she basically told us that if we didn’t let her do her thing, she was just gonna take our license right there and then.”
Nagel posted on Instagram Scott’s illegal photographing of his customers’ records, along with the note: “Yes, this is illegal.”
If further proof were needed that the attack is on legitimate gun dealers in order to force them out of business, John Lott has provided it. On Wednesday, he revealed his latest research showing that less than eight percent of all violent crime involves a firearm!
So, the war being conducted by Biden and his rogue ATF isn’t against crime and criminals. It is against legitimate gun dealers, the vast majority of whom have nothing to do with the trafficking of firearms for illegal and/or criminal purposes.
Related article:
