Joe Biden is continuing to weaponize federal law enforcement agencies, and that includes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Biden’s ATF has revoked licenses for hundreds of gun dealers, even though state and local law enforcement have regularly seen them as allies, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The president seems to be implementing his gun control agenda even without congressional support or backing from federal courts. The outlet notes that the crackdown is likely to lead to horrendous after-effects that include less cooperation in identifying potential criminal activity:
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has revoked the licenses of 122 gun dealers in the fiscal year that began in October, up from 90 for all last fiscal year and 27 in 2021.
Previously, ATF issued warnings to many firearms dealers for legal violations, in part because they are a valuable source of tips on suspicious gun buyers. The Trump and Obama administrations never revoked more than 81 dealers’ licenses annually since at least 2013, the earliest year for which data are available.
Gun dealers have filed lawsuits and threatened to stop informing federal agents about suspicious buyers, claiming that the crackdown is a way to punish the firearms industry by an administration hostile to them.
Needless to say, the Biden administration has justified the massive increase in license revocations.
“We’ve taken steps to hold accountable those few dealers who are engaging in these willful violations,” ATF Director Steve Dettelbach said, according to the WSJ. “They’re not going to have the privilege of being a gun dealer anymore.”
Meanwhile, many gun dealers complain that the regime is taking away their livelihoods over little more than paperwork errors.
“We were making $1 million a year, now it’s less than $100,000,” Anthony Navarro, who lost his license last year after receiving three earlier warnings since 2009, told the WSJ. “This policy is designed to be a backdoor violation of the Second Amendment.”
He is continuing to sell firearms accessories at his Greely, Colo., store.
The enforcement action will no doubt lead to less gun enforcement, the WSJ notes:
The ATF employs about 800 people to inspect more than 50,000 licensed dealers across the country. In the past, the agency had a light touch with inspections in part because it relied on dealers for information about suspicious gun buyers, according to former ATF officials.
“The gun dealers were our first line of defense against gun trafficking,” said Peter Forcelli, a retired deputy assistant director. “Why are we now beating an ally into submission?”
For Navarro, he said he did receive multiple warnings from the ATF but was unaware of how the violations were occurring. He only found out after an employee of his quit.
“It was a horrendous mess,” he said. “This guy hid forms underneath the printer.”
