The United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have been quietly trying to harass homeowners and gunowners this past summer for owning gun components that they appear to not favor.
In July of this year an interaction between two ATF agents and a Delaware state trooper, who visited a man’s home without a warrant and wanted the homeowner to provide legal documentation that the gun attachments he purchased were legally registered. The conversation was captured on the Delaware man’s RING doorbell camera.
Reported by Armed American News, ‘The older ATF agent told him they were assigned to a task force investigating straw purchases. A straw purchase – a federal felony – occurs when someone buys a firearm on behalf of another person, who is unable to legally purchase a firearm themselves.’
‘The agent said they were verifying that people who bought multiple firearms still had the guns in their possession. The homeowner had bought seven firearms since January 2022. He asked the men for identification, which the agents and trooper produced. They admitted they did not have a search warrant. The doorbell camera recorded what happened next,’ AAN further explained.
Agent 1 – “All I’m doing is verifying that you have it, you got two different purchases. If you have them, I’m out of here. That’s how quick it is. Yeah. Do you have them with you by any chance?”
Homeowner – “They’re in my safe.”
Agent 1 – “If you can unload them and bring them out. We can go out to your foyer here, check them out, write the serial numbers and we’re out of here.”
Homeowner – “That’s it?”
Agent 1 – “Yep.”
Agent 2 – “That’s it. It will take five seconds.”
Trooper – “The reason we’re out here is obviously gun violence is at an uptick. We want to make sure – we’ve been having a lot of issues with straw purchases. One of the things, indicators we get is someone making a large gun purchase, and then a lot of times we’ve been there and ‘Oh, those guns got taken.’”
Agent 1 – “The idea is that when you purchase more than two guns at a time it generates a multiple sales report and it comes to us and we have to check them out. That’s all that is. You did nothing wrong – absolutely zero. I noticed you were stopped in Philly though with one of your guns?”
Trooper – “We’ll wait if you feel more comfortable.”
Homeowner – “I’m okay. I just – I didn’t expect…”
Agent 1 – “Oh no. It just came up. We came here, look, I’m telling you. There’s an email from the federal side saying can you make sure this guy’s got his guns. If you recently purchased a whole bunch of guns, if we can look at them and just scratch them off…”
Homeowner – “I have them all.”
Agent 2 – “We can look at them and write which ones you just bought, so we can save a trip from coming back. We’ll confirm that you have them.”
[The homeowner agreed to get the firearms, closed the front door while the agents remained on the front porch, unaware they were being recorded].
Trooper – “He doesn’t believe we’re cops.”
Agent 1 – “I don’t blame him.”
After the ordeal, the homeowner said in a statement:
I was embarrassed. My neighbors saw the whole thing – guys in these police vests standing in my yard. I was really uncomfortable. I felt really confused, like I was in some way being accused of something even though I didn’t commit a crime. It was quite embarrassing. I knew they couldn’t come in, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to get put on some watch list. We just got new gun laws here. I didn’t want them coming back again. I felt like they were invading my privacy.
In response to this event, AAN explained how these officers were in the wrong for what they did:
Delaware State Police have a proven lack of respect for the Second Amendment. They were once caught maintaining a secret list of gun owners, even though state law required them to destroy firearm records after 60 days. They used the list to illegally thwart at least one firearm purchase. Pairing one of their troopers with the ATF was bound to produce a host of constitutional violations. It was only a matter of time.
These types of warrantless investigations are known as “knock and talks.” They’re usually a tool reserved for narcotics detectives and they’ve always been constitutionally suspect. Police rely upon verbal skills and their powers of persuasion to convince a homeowner to waive their Fourth Amendment rights and let them in. Unlike this case, there’s usually no record of what the cops told the homeowner in order to gain access to the home.
To be clear, if the ATF agents had probable cause to believe this homeowner was actually a straw purchaser, they could have petitioned the court for a search warrant. They didn’t have a shred of probable cause in this case. In fact, all they had was an internal email stating “make sure this guy’s got his guns.”
This homeowner lives in an upscale, affluent neighborhood – a factor that certainly played a role in the agents’ plans. They were counting on the homeowner to let them in quickly, rather than risk a neighbor seeing three LEOs in tactical vests milling around in his front yard.
The fact that neither the ATF nor the Delaware State Police were willing to answer questions, much less defend the actions of their officers, speaks volumes, too. Both agencies mistakenly believe that if they ignore difficult questions they’ll go away.
But these inconspicuous acts via the ATF certainly have not stopped there.
In mid-August ZeroHedge reported that the ATF was reportedly going after ‘”multiple people” to confiscate previously legal forced reset triggers for AR-15 style rifles that were recently classified as “machine guns.”‘
AmmoLand Shooting Sports News reported that these tipoffs were traced back to “customers’ information from credit card processors or shipping companies.”
One person affected by this harassment from the ATF posted some of the letters and warnings online.
Nevertheless, ZeroHedge has previously reported that as the “ATF Tries To Ban Forced Reset Triggers As People Begin To 3D Print At Home.”
And one week later after that, Ammoland reported that the ATF is now going after Solvent Trap Components.
Over the past week, multiple law-abiding gun owners have contacted me about visitations by ATF agents attempting to get the individuals to hand over solvent trap components and FRT triggers purchased on GunBroker. Solvent traps are used to collect solvents from when a user cleans their guns.
With the proper paperwork, some solvent trap component owners convert their legally owned solvent traps into suppressors. For years, gun owners could legally buy solvent trap components and file a National Firearms Act “Form 1” with the ATF, pay $200.00 a tax, and legally own a home-manufactured suppressor. The ATF recently changed its position on solvent traps and now dictates that somehow solvent trap components are suppressors.
John Crump, a NRA instructor, wrote in his report
And yet again, another visitation from ATF agents was recently captured on camera, once again without a warrant. This homeowner, on the other hand, did not comply with the agent’s demands as they had no warrant.
So, as more gun regulations continue to get passed through the Congress and Senate – with next to no upheaval from the masses, and holding all parties and figures involved responsible – and the ATF continues to be empowered to go after law abiding gunowners; retired Judge Andrew Napolitano provides a method that will alleviate some of the current issues for now: purchase guns and ammunition with cash only.
Napolitano published his recommendations on his website on September 15th. Here is what he says to say:
Under pressure from the governors of New York and California and their enormous state pension funds, Visa, Mastercard and American Express have agreed to keep a list of commercial transactions made through their credit card systems at gun shops. These credit card middlemen make more money the more purchasers spend, but this pivot to social activism, though lawful, is dangerous to freedom and manifests an antipathy to constitutional norms by the corporations whose services many of us employ without a second thought. Of course, the government involvement is unconstitutional.
The pension funds, managed by state government officials with known animosities to lawful gun ownership, are large shareholders in the credit card companies. Their public pressure on the credit card companies to do anything to chill lawful gun ownership constitutes the use of government financial power to erode Second Amendment rights, which the Supreme Court has upheld three times since 2008.
The government officials who have pushed the credit card companies to do this apparently do not take seriously their oaths to uphold the Constitution. Or, perhaps, they deceptively take the oath of office to a Constitution as they wish it to be, and not as the court has interpreted it.
The court has defined the right to keep guns in the home in a case called Heller, and the right to carry guns outside the home in a case called Bruen, as fundamental personal rights of pre-political origins. Stated differently, the right to own, carry and use a gun is a modern-day extension of the ancient right to self-defense, which is a natural right. The court recognized that adults may own, carry and use the same level of weaponry that the bad guys do and that the government uses.
This is so because the dual purposes of the Second Amendment are to recognize and protect the right to shoot crazies and thugs who are killing or threatening innocents before the police arrive and the right to shoot at agents of a totalitarian government or an invading force.
Just three months ago in the Bruen case, the court ruled that the Second Amendment’s protections are not second-class, rather they are coextensive with the protections of the First Amendment. That amendment, of course, recognizes the natural rights to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to associate or not with whomever you please, and to worship how you wish or not. These rights — along with the rights to self-defense, property ownership and the right to be left alone — are the fundamental natural rights utilized by all rational persons in the pursuit of happiness.
Now, back to the big-state pension funds cajoling the credit card companies to keep records for the government. The records are of no commercial value to the credit card companies. If you buy a $2,000 gun safe or $2,000 in gun safety lessons or $2,000 in guns and ammunition at a gun shop, the credit card companies’ lists will just show a $2,000 gun shop purchase. They will not show the item acquired.
Since the right interfered with here is fundamental — that’s the highest category of rights we have — it is unconstitutional for the government to lift a finger against it. From 1934 to 2022, the states had near carte blanche to interfere with gun ownership outside the home. That was based on a now reversed, poorly articulated and profoundly unjust Supreme Court decision called Miller v. U.S, in which only the government’s lawyers were heard. And the states made the most of the authoritarian authorization Miller granted to them.
Yet in 2008, and again this year, the Supreme Court finally recognized that Miller was wrongly heard (hearing only the government’s side of the case) and wrongly decided (holding that the Second Amendment only protected state militias). Thus, the same big-government states that Miller unleashed, Heller and Bruen now restrain.
The anti-gun crowd has difficulty accepting this, just as they do any court decision that liberates folks from government clutches. Yet, we and they would all lead the howls of complaint if the credit card companies reported our book purchases or internet usage fees to the government.
We already have massive spying on us by the feds and the states. This is done not by search warrants as the Fourth Amendment requires, but by government at all levels ignoring the Fourth Amendment.
As this column argued last week, the billions of dollars spent on this surveillance is largely without express legislative authorization and consists at the federal level of the exploitation of the intelligence community’s secret budgets, and at the local and state levels of police slush funds with expenditures not authorized by a proper legislative body after a proper public debate.
Where does all this leave us?
It leaves us with the certain knowledge that many of our elected officials — folks we have hired to protect our rights — do not take their oaths of office seriously. It leaves us with a national gun registry nowhere authorized by the Constitution. And it leaves us with the knowledge that the feds have yet another avenue on which to violate our privacy by creepily looking at our credit card bills. Many states already unconstitutionally keep track of gun ownership. Thanks to the credit card companies, the feds can now do so as well.
What should you do if you used a credit card to make a gun shop purchase and the feds come knocking at your door asking to see your hardware? You should ask to see their search warrant. They won’t have one, in which case you should politely say, “Have a good day” and close and lock your door. Then call your local police and report unwanted knocking on your door by an armed stranger.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.
Ecclesiastes 9:18
The verse is obviously not condemning owning weapons: Jesus himself told his disciples to sell their garments and buy a sword (Luke 22:36-38). But, understanding the times we live in is key.
This is another reason why the coming CBDCs will create massive problems for gun purchases, and is why you MUST resist it, and warn people about it. For when this system comes in, and the sheeple accept it without a fight, every little thing associated with firearms and weaponry will be tracked and catalogued. Therefore, if you are looking to buy a weapon of any kind, sooner the better.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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Great article !
those “ATF” guys in that second video were tyrants. The way they talk like they have authority over that man and his guns. I was livid just listening to it. He kept his cool better than I would have