New ATF “Zero Tolerance” Policy

BY Herschel Smith
1 year, 3 months ago

Epoch Times.

Having failed to pass gun bans to curtail Americans’ purchases of firearms, the Biden administration appears now to be attempting to restrict the supply of guns, with a new “zero tolerance” policy at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that has put nearly 2,000 gun sellers out of business in the past two years, according to one lawsuit. 

Starting in 2021, the ATF implemented an aggressive agenda in its inspections of Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs), in many cases permanently revoking licenses over what defendants say are minor clerical errors. 

“This is an end-around gun ban, because you start putting gun dealers out of business and now all of a sudden it’s very difficult for people to purchase firearms,” Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America (GOA), told The Epoch Times. GOA filed a lawsuit on July 11 against the Biden administration in response to the ATF’s zero-tolerance enforcement.

The GOA lawsuit is requesting that the courts issue an injunction to end the ATF’s zero tolerance policies and “declare that the [ATF] has acted unconstitutionally, arbitrarily, capriciously, and contrary to law, in the establishment of and/or application of standards for revocation of federal firearm licenses.”

According to the ATF, the agency revoked 88 FFL licenses in 2022, compared to five that were revoked in 2021. 

But a recent GOA court filing states that, “in addition to revocations, ATF has coerced and intimidated an ever increasing number of FFLs into ‘voluntarily’ ceasing operations. In fact, the number of FFLs who discontinued business following a compliance inspection increased from 96 in 2020 to 789 in 2021 (the year that ‘zero tolerance’ was adopted) to 1,037 in 2022, an overall increase of more than 1,000%.”

Here is the GOA lawsuit.  Our buddy Stephen Stamboulieh is involved in this.  Godspeed to Stephen.

Here is a video of a home FFL in Texas trying to fight the power.

Look folks, it doesn’t matter if you’re a manufacturer, distributor, store-front FFL or home FFL.  Certain things must be done to stay in business.  You must be error-free.  You must engage in the tools for reduction of human errors, STAR (stop, think, act and review), independent verification, self-check, etc., etc.  You cannot mark down the wrong serial number on a Form 4473.  This is the case not because it’s the moral or right thing to do.  I consider the entire schema of firearm serialization to be unconstitutional and immoral. Furthermore, those who enforce this unconstitutional and immoral practice are communists.

You must do it to stay in business.  Obtain help.  Hire another worker to check behind you.  Make it the sole responsibility of one of the workers to check the forms.  This is your livelihood.

By the way, the error rates from lowest to highest in industries is as follows. (1) Commercial Nuclear Power where tens of thousands of manipulations are performed each day, from opening or closing valves, turning pumps on or off, venting systems, calibrating transmitters, and so on, (2) The Airline Industry (whose error rate is higher than nuclear power, but still relatively low considering all of the flights and equipment manipulations every day), (3) the Pharmaceutical Industry (whose error rate is very high according to an executive with whom I talked), and finally, (4) The Medical Profession.  A Major Study by Harvard and Johns Hopkins found that over 800,000 Americans are killed/seriously injured every year due to medical errors and misdiagnoses.

But they want to shut down the FFLs.  You must be better than them.


Comments

  1. On July 27, 2023 at 9:02 am, Bob in NC said:

    And I wnder how often the more aggressive agents are demanding the defunct FFLs to hand over their 4473s….

  2. On July 27, 2023 at 9:39 am, PGF said:

    @Bob is onto the root of this. FFL’s have a certain number of days, upon exiting the business, to give all the 4473’s to ATF in WV. But, there’s no database; just keep believing that.

  3. On July 27, 2023 at 10:01 am, Grunt said:

    They got a local gun shop here in S Central Kentucky. Been in business for 19 years. Great shop, a few chairs with locals hanging out, A Lab laying by the door would greet you when you came in. They had two errors on 4473’s in 19 years. The atf called it
    “Willful Violations”. Implying that they willfully made the errors. I wonder what the atf’s paperwork would look like should there be a deep audit on their paperwork?

  4. On July 27, 2023 at 6:12 pm, Allen said:

    There should be zero tolerance for violating the constitution.
    I’m not holding my breath though.

  5. On July 28, 2023 at 7:48 am, ZERO[F2G] said:

    My brother in law has( had) been a home based FFL for 15 years, earlier this year an ATF audit found ” willful errors” dates that incorrect for the states wait time for possession, and revoked his license. He has in fact for years been falsifying the dates so that customers could pick up on the same day as purchase, which in my mind is constitutional. Having to wait 3 days on long guns and 7 days on handguns is a constitutional violation by the state.

    As I understand it, he missed one or two 4473’s that the customer wrote down a date other than he specified. My guess is since he was only open for business a few evenings a week, having worked his full time job that day, the hour getting late, the wife getting grumpy, him wanting get some family time he missed one or two errors in those thousands of transactions.

    Whatever it was, the commies got what they wanted, one less FFL on the books.

    Its a shame the book Unintended Consequences was fiction, and not a recounting of actual events.

  6. On July 28, 2023 at 7:14 pm, PGF said:

    2k FFLs have been shut down. Thousands of more inspections are planed before October.

    Source https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-07-27-atf-shut-down-2000-gun-stores.html

    This appears to be systematic.

  7. On July 29, 2023 at 7:22 am, Latigo Morgan said:

    An FFL I bought a lot of tools from retired after 40 years in the business. He had all his records in a shed on his property. Shortly after he retired and sold his store, that shed caught fire and burned. It was a real tragedy that so many years of 4473’s burned like that before they could be shipped to the ATF.

  8. On July 30, 2023 at 10:03 am, Matt said:

    This nonsense would stop if being an ATF agent had a lower survival rate.

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