Shifting from gun bans on buyers, Biden administration now targeting sellers, critics say
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%.”
The numbers the GOA cites correspond to investigations categorized by the ATF as “resolved as discontinued.”
“There is a clear animus in the written policies that the ATF pushes down on its employees that indicate this idea of, ‘We’re now going to attack the Second Amendment’ supply chain, since we’re unable to convince Congress to pass ‘assault weapons’ bans, high magazine bans or just bans in general,” John Harris, an attorney representing FFLs in their appeals of ATF licensing actions, told The Epoch Times.
