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The Biden administration has been aiming to label regular gun owners as “gun dealers” by criminalizing those who sell their firearms privately.
Additionally, Biden’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is trying to enforce his covert plan to target law-abiding gun owners.
A recent report from the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action highlighted a change in the definition of a “gun dealer” brought about by the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The bill, signed into law by Biden on June 25, 2022, removed the requirement for a “livelihood” motive in the definition, leaving only the “profit” aspect.
The regulations proposed by the ATF are expected to have a chilling impact on gun owners. The NRA-ILA expresses concerns that if the ATF starts arresting and prosecuting individuals for simply selling a gun to a friend, it could create a dangerous precedent and essentially prohibit private gun transfers.
Paxton further argues that Biden’s revised definition of a “gun dealer” would unfairly label hundreds of thousands of law-abiding gun owners as potential criminals simply for selling a single firearm to a friend.
This alteration implies that any gun owner selling a firearm to a friend, family member, or neighbor could now be classified as a “gun dealer.” As a result, they may be obligated to obtain a costly gun dealer license and could face legal consequences for not conducting a thorough background check on the buyer.
Additionally, these rules aim to empower the ATF to conduct civil forfeiture actions to seize firearms, ammunition, and profits from gun sales. In response, several states have filed major lawsuits to challenge this aggressive anti-gun move by the ATF and the Biden administration. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has initiated one of these lawsuits and has garnered support from 21 other state attorneys general to uphold the Second Amendment rights.
“Biden’s latest attempt to strip away the Second Amendment rights of Americans through ATF regulations will make many law-abiding gun owners felons if they sell a firearm or two to family or friends,” Kobach said in a news release about the suit. “This rule is blatantly unconstitutional. We are suing to defend the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.”
Kobach cautions that the new regulation could turn millions of law-abiding citizens into criminals overnight. According to Kobach’s press statement, the ATF’s rule mandates that individuals must acquire a federal firearms dealer license for any transaction that the ATF deems as profitable, whether it involves currency, exchanging another firearm, or providing gunsmithing services.
“It could make a felon of a gun hobbyist who sells a firearm to another family member or of a hunter who trades a firearm with another hunting buddy,” the AG’s press release explained.
“Until now, those who repetitively purchased and sold firearms as a regular course of business had to become a licensee… This rule would put innocent firearm sales between law-abiding friends and family members within reach of federal regulation,” the court filing reads. “Such innocent sales between friends and family would constitute a felony if the seller did not in fact obtain a federal firearms license and perform a background check.”
Attorneys General from multiple states, including Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming, have joined Kobach’s lawsuit.
Additionally, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has initiated legal action against the Biden administration, accusing the government of overreach. In a news release, Paxton stated that he is suing the federal government for unlawfully infringing on Americans’ constitutional right to engage in private firearm transactions.
“The ATF’s regulatory restrictions go beyond the authority granted to the agency by Congress. The new Final Rule is arbitrary and capricious and is a flagrant violation of the Second Amendment. Attorney General Paxton is seeking immediate injunctive relief to stop the ATF from enforcing its unlawful edict while the issue is considered fully by the courts,” Paxton said in his news release.
“Yet again, Joe Biden is weaponizing the federal bureaucracy to rip up the Constitution and destroy our citizens’ Second Amendment rights,” Paxton said. “This is a dramatic escalation of his tyrannical abuse of authority. With today’s lawsuit, it is my great honor to defend our Constitutionally-protected freedoms from the out-of-control federal government.”
Utah, Mississippi, and 23 additional states have united in support of Paxton’s legal action, as mentioned in the news release. These attorneys general, representing over half of the states, are justified in their stance. Biden and the ATF are leveraging their authority to establish regulations that undermine the Second Amendment and potentially criminalize numerous Americans for exercising their right to own and carry firearms.
The ATF’s contentious regulations are a covert attempt to undermine our Second Amendment freedoms, and it is imperative to confront this encroachment on gun rights.