Biden admin crackdown on legal gun dealers leads to 350% rise in license loss

Gun sellers are crying foul as the Biden administration pursues an obvious crackdown on authorized firearms sellers, whose licenses have been revoked at an unprecedented price over the past two years.

“This coverage is designed to be a backdoor violation of the Second Modification,” Anthony Navarro, a Greeley, Colorado, seller who misplaced his license final yr, told the Wall Street Journal.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has taken away the licenses of 122 gun sellers since October — up from simply 27 revocations in all of fiscal yr 2021, a 350% enhance within the first 9 months of this fiscal yr alone.

Sellers complain that most of the violations resulting in the lack of their companies quantity to little greater than paperwork errors.

Navarro, for instance, stated he knowledgeable the ATF instantly when he discovered {that a} lax worker had been mishandling consumers’ buy paperwork — and misplaced his license consequently.

Leslie Gifford of Burkington, Kansas, who legally offered weapons as a sideline for greater than 30 years, had his license pulled for promoting a firearm to a hid carry holder from Nebraska, who ought to have been procuring in his own residence state.

“Mr. Biden needs to eliminate all of us little sellers,” Gifford stated.

In a just lately filed lawsuit, North Dakota gun retailer Bridge Metropolis Ordnance alleged that the ATF’s newly strict inspection coverage is being “wielded as a political weapon.” “

However the Biden administration’s strategy might backfire — as gun sellers threaten to cease informing federal authorities about suspicious consumers in retaliation.

“The gun dealers had been our first line of protection in opposition to gun trafficking,” stated Peter Forcelli, a retired ATF deputy assistant director. “Why are we now beating an ally into submission?”

Gun management advocates cheered the clampdown.

“We’ve taken steps to carry accountable these few sellers who’re partaking in these willful violations,” ATF Director Steve Dettelbach stated.

“They’re not going to have the privilege of being a gun seller anymore.”