The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is drafting a new rule that would effectively ban private sales of all firearms by expanding background checks, according to several ATF whistleblowers.
However, such a rule would:
- Arguably be unconstitutional;
- Pretty much be unenforceable; and,
- Be the first step to establishing a federal gun registry.
Empower Oversight, a nonprofit, nonpartisan government watchdog group, announced Wednesday that the new rule was in its final drafting stages.
Empower Oversight “has learned through whistleblowers within ATF that at the direction of the White House, ATF has drafted a 1,300-page document to justify a rule effectively banning the private sale of firearms,” said Tristan Leavitt, Empower Oversight president at the start of a thread of posts on Twitter/X.
He added that he believed the new rule “would also circumvent the separation of powers in the Constitution, which grants ‘all legislative Powers’ to Congress while requiring that the President ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’”
Biden promised less than two months before the 2020 election to govern in the normal course, with Congress making the laws and the president executing them.
“I have this strange notion, we are a democracy,” he told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos during an October 2020 town hall. “if you can’t get the votes … you can’t [legislate] by executive order unless you’re a dictator. We’re a democracy. We need consensus.”
Yet he began signing executive orders on his first day, and within less than two weeks he’d signed more than three dozen. And he’s still at it, having signed a student loan “forgiveness” order after the Supreme Court found an earlier one unconstitutional.
And now he’s recruiting the ATF to help him expand background checks on gun sales — clearly a function of Congress. Nothing changes with this president.
Such a rule would also be unenforceable.
The purpose of the new rule is to make all firearm sales subject to a background check into the buyer’s criminal history.
If Tom sells a firearm to Dick, who’s gonna tell the ATF?
Dick, the buyer? Nope. Tom, the seller? Not likely.
The government can’t enforce a rule by prosecuting a violation it knows nothing about.
But the most problematic result of the new ATF rule is that it would provide the framework for a federal gun registry.
Such a registry is prohibited by two federal provisions that set limits on the ATF, and two others that do the same for the FBI, according to the Congressional Research Service.
But that doesn’t mean they won’t try.
The one thing preventing an unscrupulous White House from establishing a “behind the scenes” federal gun registry is the lack of a universal background check system.
Private exchanges — transfers of guns from father to son, sales between friends, or from a widow to a neighbor — aren’t subject to background checks. The effect of the ATF rule would be to establish a universal background check system.
A decade ago political pundit Ann Coulter explained that the danger of universal background checks was that it would provide the government with a record of who owned every firearm in existence.
"Universal background check means universal registration,” she told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “Universal registration means universal confiscation, universal extermination," she continued. "That's how it goes in history. Do not fall for universal background checks."
The final draft of the rule is being prepared “by Senior Policy Counsel Eric Epstein, who worked as the Phoenix Field Office’s Division Counsel during Operation Wide Receiver (a precursor of Operation Fast and Furious).”
The watchdog group sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Justice Department and the ATF Wednesday, asking for Epstein’s emails discussing any ban of private sales, as well as communications between ATF, the DOJ and the White House on the topic.
The Biden administration hasn’t maintained a very stellar record on individual rights — not if you’re a mom speaking up at school board meetings or a pro-lifer praying at an abortion mill.
And Biden has repeatedly made it clear that he doesn’t care much for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Coulter’s words, “Universal registration means universal confiscation, universal extermination,” suddenly seem more possible today than they did a decade ago.
And one of the first jobs of the next Republican president should be to clear the ATF and FBI of any records of private gun ownership.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.