The Biden administration is revoking gun licenses from firearms dealers at an unprecedented rate over the past two years, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
Reportedly, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) revoked the licenses of 122 gun dealers in the last fiscal year that began in October. This is up from 90 from the last fiscal year, and 27 in 2021. WSJ noted that the Trump and Obama administrations never revoked more than 81 dealers’ licenses annually since at least 2013.
The AFT reportedly issued warnings to many firearms dealers for legal violations before their licenses were revoked. Now, gun dealers have filed lawsuits against the Biden administration and have reportedly threatened to stop informing federal agents of suspicious gun buyers.
“We were making $1 million a year, now it’s less than $100,000,” Anthony Navarro, a gun shop owner who lost his license last year, told WSJ. “This policy is designed to be a backdoor violation of the Second Amendment.” Navarro reportedly received three warnings since 2009.
The ATF reportedly employs 800 people to inspect more than 50,000 licensed gun dealers, and, “in the past, the agency had a light touch with inspections in part because it relied on dealers for information about suspicious gun buyers,” WSJ noted.
“The gun dealers were our first line of defense against gun trafficking,” Peter Forcelli, a retired deputy assistant director for the ATF, told the outlet. “Why are we now beating an ally into submission?”
A gun shop in North Dakota that recently filed a lawsuit said that the inspections are being “wielded as a political weapon.”
Leslie Gifford, an 82-year-old who sold firearms out of his garage, had his license pulled.
“Mr. Biden wants to get rid of all of us little dealers,” Gifford told WSJ. “Gets me wound up, boy. It’s a political game, sure as hell.”
Earlier this year, Townhall covered how Biden’s ATF decided to go after the pistol stabilizing brace, a device attached to the rear of a firearm that allows the weapon to be fired one-handed. The Biden administration’s new rule determined that pistols with a stabilizing brace would be reclassified as “short-barreled rifles” and that existing pistols with braces be registered with the federal government.
In June, the White House announced that Biden would veto any resolution led by congressional Republicans that would protect Americans’ access to pistol braces. In a statement, the White House Office of Management and Budget blamed pistol braces for “mass carnage” at several shootings.
In a congressional hearing this year, Alex Bosco, the inventor of the pistol stabilizing brace, explained how the Biden administration’s rule “[circumvented] the legislative process.”
“Shortly after swearing in, President Biden decided to reverse the previous decade of ATF decisions on stabilizing braces. He ordered ATF to treat pistols modified with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles subject to NFA [National Firearms Act] controls,” Bosco said.
In the hearing, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) pointed out that the fundamental issue behind the rule change was that there was no bill in Congress for the change.
In Bosco’s exchange with Jordan, he noted that his company has sold “many millions” of stabilizing braces. Jordan said he’s heard that as many as 40 million Americans could own the product.
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— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) March 23, 2023
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