Federal agency attempts to make firearms retailers spy on their customers under new illegal directive.
Even as it finds itself embroiled in a scandal that saw weapons being deliberately sent to criminal gangs in Mexico, the ATF has issued a letter ordering firearms dealers in border states to report sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles, and is following it up by harassing gun owners with intimidating home visits as well as threatening gun dealers to spy on their customers.
The ATF letter also orders gun dealers to report to the feds sales of “two or more pistols or revolvers, or any combination of pistols or revolvers totaling two or more.”
The letter, which was subsequently sent out to gun dealers and has since entered the public domain, orders firearms retailers to “Submit to ATF reports of multiple sales or other dispositions whenever, at one time or during any five consecutive business days, you sell to an unlicensed person or otherwise dispose of two or more semi-automatic rifles capable of accepting a detachable magazine and with a caliber greater than .22 (including .223/5.56 caliber).” The directive takes effect from August 14, 2011.
However, what the federal agency isn’t keen to make public is how its agents are using these reports to make threatening home visits to firearms owners, while ordering gun store owners to become de facto informants by telling them to spy on their customers.
According to several gun dealers in Austin as well as one of our own staff members, the ATF is visiting people’s homes, demanding to be allowed inside without a warrant, and implying that gun owners could be terrorists for purchasing two or more firearms at a time.
Illustrating how lawless this is, a central Texas gun dealer who provided Alex Jones with the ATF letter, contacted Daniel Jones, the head of the ATF in Austin two weeks before receiving the letter to ask about news reports that President Obama was going to order the investigation of citizens that bought two or more rifles. Agent Jones told him “no that law is not going to pass, and we can’t enforce something that isn’t law so don’t worry about it.” Of course, the law didn’t pass but the ATF later enforced it anyway.
Americans who purchase guns are already forced to undergo checks against the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System to prove they are not a criminal. The ATF’s new unconstitutional directive only adds an extra layer of bureaucracy, putting a further squeeze on second amendment rights while creating a logistical nightmare for firearms retailers.
The letter orders retailers to report each sale of two or more weapons before the end of the same business day, requiring them to fill in a form for each sale that takes over 10 minutes to complete. This extra burden will create hundreds of extra necessary man hours for every gun store per year, and could even put the smaller ones out of business.
The ATF’s efforts to intimidate both gun sellers and purchasers also arrives months after President Obama told gun control advocate Sarah Brady that his administration was working “under the radar” to sneak attack the second amendment.
During a March 30 meeting between Jim and Sarah Brady and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, at which Obama “dropped in,” the president reportedly told Brady, “I just want you to know that we are working on it (gun control)….We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”
But this mandate by the ATF– imposed without law via executive policy– clearly violates the 2nd Amendment by conditioning the public not to buy guns. Placing suspicion on the purchase of more than two guns, filling out purchaser profile reports and making visits to customer homes all chill the notion that gun ownership is still “legal” and “upright.” A type of martial law has been imposed upon the entire Southwest zone in the name of fighting cross-border drug gangs, restricting 2nd Amendment rights and placing the burden of proof upon the seller. Just as drug war border zones extending 50 miles on either side of the border are sold as “Constitution free zones” where rights can be violated, the ATF has effectively issued a freeze on gun dealers in 4 states, all while the Justice Department, ATF, FBI & Co. based in Phoenix ran a false flag under Operation Fast & Furious to arm drug gangs to frame sellers in the Southwest border zone. A similar false flag was run in Austin in 2010 where the ATF and local police staged an arrest and declared a ban on private sales in effort to shut down the Gun Shows, a favorite target of gun grabbers longing to close the “loopholes.”