The Biden regime has opened a new front in their war on law-abiding gun owners. Leaked ATF documents reveal the Regime plans to shut down gun stores across America by pursuing a “zero tolerance” policy for revoking federal firearm licenses (FFL).
Gun Owners Of America obtained these documents earlier this month which show the ATF updated its federal firearms license inspection guidance in January 2022. The Biden regime previously announced in July 2021 that they would be updating the guidelines established under the Trump administration.
The new guidelines state the “ATF must establish willfulness” to proceed with cancelling licenses, but the agency “does not have to establish a history of prior violations to determine willfulness.” Furthermore, revocation of the FFL’s license “is the assumed action” with violations.
Once FFLs are revoked, these records are added to the ATF’s digital gun registry which has nearly a billion gun and gun owner records. The new guidance greatly expands the Regime’s ability to criminalize law-abiding Americans and enact a backdoor national firearms ban.
Click below to read the full document:
624836022-2022-ATF-O-5370-1E-Federal-Firearms-Administrative-Action-Policy-Procedures
None of this should come as a shock to Americans. The Gateway Pundit last month reported on how the ATF banned millions of guns by reclassifying pistol braces. Violators can receive up to ten years for noncompliance.
Fox News Digital reported:
Internal documents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) show the “zero tolerance” guidelines the agency is using to shut down gun stores.
The guidance says the agency “has zero tolerance for willful violations that greatly affect public safety and ATF’s ability to trace firearms recovered in violent crimes” and that “revocation” of the FFL’s license “is the assumed action” with violations.
“Therefore, revocation is the assumed action, unless extraordinary circumstances exist, when violations are cited that include” transferring a firearm “to a prohibited person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe the transferee is a prohibited person,” failing to perform a background check, and “making a false or fictitious written statement in the FFL’s required records or in applying for a firearms license,” the guidance reads.
The new guidelines say the “ATF must establish willfulness” to proceed with cancelling licenses, but the agency “does not have to establish a history of prior violations to determine willfulness.”
Accordingly, ATF will revoke a federal firearms license, absent extraordinary circumstances on initial violations, if those violations inherently demonstrate willfulness, such as transferring a firearm to a prohibited person; failing to run a background check prior to transferring a firearm to a non-licensee; falsifying records, or making false statements; failing to respond to an ATF tracing request; refusing to permit ATF to conduct an inspection; or allowing a straw sale of a firearm to occur.
Aiden Johnston, GOA’s director of federal affairs, told Fox News Digital that “Joe Biden has weaponized the ATF against gun owners and the firearms industry in an attempt to violate the Second Amendment and expand his illegal gun registry.”
“Rather than targeting those who display clear negligence and disregard for the law, ATF now revokes licenses without warning at the discovery of a first mistake by honest gun dealers,” Johnston said.
“When Federal Firearms Licensees are forced out of business, ATF adds their records to its digital gun registry that has nearly a billion gun and gun owner records,” he continued. “GOA is already working with Second Amendment champions like Rep. Michael Cloud on Capitol Hill to address this alarming issue and eliminate this unconstitutional gun registry.”
GOA previously blasted the ATF for their “illegal gun registry” in their new report on the finalized rule requiring FFLs to maintain purchase records indefinitely.
The group’s report on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requested documents revealed the ATF “is maintaining a digital, searchable, centralized registry of guns and gun owners in violation of various federal prohibitions.”
GOA wrote in their report that the “ATF has reached a point where it has converted nearly one billion records (required to be kept by FFLs) into a single, centralized, and searchable national gun registry, that is routinely searched by multiple data fields (except, reportedly, by gun owner name).”
