ATF Intimidates Gun Owners With Home Visits
Federal agency attempts to make firearms retailers spy on their customers under new illegal directive Paul Joseph Watson & Aaron Dykes 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. As the Justice Department announced earlier this month,
“All gun shops in four Southwest border states (Texas, California,
Arizona and New Mexico) will be required to alert the federal
government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles.” 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. This is all based on a directive from the federal government that is
completely outside of the law and unconstitutional. The law that would
have required gun dealers in border states to report sales of two or
more semi-automatic rifles to the ATF was “stripped entirely from the text of the regulation” when it came up for a vote in Congress on April 15,
but as part of the Obama administration’s dictatorial zeal to
accomplish its agenda outside of the law, the program is going ahead
anyway. The federal government is enforcing a law that was never passed. Read the letter the ATF is sending out to gun stores below (click to enlarge). 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 intimidation campaign directed against firearms dealers
and gun owners is all unfolding while the organization simultaneously
comes under scrutiny for the infamous Operation Fast and Furious,
a BATF program that. “Sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun
shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border.
Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then
handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.” Some of
the weapons were later used to kill US Border Patrol agents like Brian
Terry. After being caught sending weapons to Mexican criminals that were
used to kill U.S. Border Patrol agents, police and citizens, the ATF is
now treating American citizens like criminals simply for exercising
their second amendment rights, all under the guise of a regulation that
was rejected by Congress and never became law. The Obama administration and the ATF claim that the Fast and Furious program was part of a sting operation to catch leading Mexican drug runners, and yet it’s admitted that the government stopped tracking the firearms as soon as they reached the border,
defeating the entire object of the mission, unless the mission was
about pushing through gun control in the US and had nothing to do with
the drug war. As the evidence clearly indicates, Operation Fast and Furious
was likely a plot on behalf of the administration to discredit the
second amendment. While the feds were selling guns to Mexican drug
gangs, Obama was simultaneously blaming drug violence on the flow of guns from border states to Mexico. 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.” The quote appeared in an April 11 Washington Post story about Obama’s gun control czar Steve Croley. The name of the gun shop owner who provided us with the ATF
letter is withheld because he doesn’t want to face recriminations from
a notoriously vindictive agency. 2nd amendment tv videos |
