Delaware — A small business owner with no criminal record was shocked this month when he watched a disturbing scene unfold on his Ring doorbell camera. When he checked the notification on his phone he noticed three armed men wearing tactical vests, dressed in t-shirts and blue jeans. Two of the armed men were agents with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the third was a Delaware state trooper.
Knowing he had committed no crime, the business owner who wishes to remain anonymous, had no idea why these men were there so he walked out to confront them before they ever knocked. The entire interaction was recorded on his camera system.
“Can I help you?” he asks.
The homeowner had recently made a firearm purchase and the ATF agent told him they were there to verify it. Making sure this wasn’t a scam or a setup, the homeowner verified their identification before proceeding.
The ATF agent then pulled out a list of recent firearms purchased by the man and demanded to see them. The ATF claimed they were investigating straw purchases. A straw purchase is when someone buys a gun for a third party who is not legally authorized to buy a gun themselves.
The following creepy dialogue then unfolded as the ATF showed the homeowner a list of all of his guns — which the ATF claims not to have.
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.”
When the homeowner went back inside to retrieve his guns, the cops had a telling conversation outside, not knowing they were being recorded.
Trooper – “He doesn’t believe we’re cops.”
Agent 1 – “I don’t blame him.”
After showing the agents his firearm, they left. The homeowner had been coerced into a warrantless search of his property despite the fact that he was not suspected of committing a crime, nor was he the subject of any law enforcement action.
In fact, because the ATF agents did not have a warrant, it means they lacked any probable cause to obtain one. Their entire warrantless search relied on the compliance of the homeowner — who in hindsight says he wishes he wouldn’t have consented to the search.
A reporter with Ammoland spoke to the homeowner who told them this situation was embarrassing as it was disturbing.
“I was embarrassed,” the homeowner said. “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.”
Unfortunately, it appears that this is going to become the new norm. In July of last year, US attorneys offices and the ATF announced that they will be investigating straw purchases more aggressively, “focusing not only on major cities, but also the neighboring towns and states.”
All the ATF needs to do is claim they suspect you of making a straw purchase and now they can come to your door and demand to see your guns. If that does happen, and they have no warrant, you do not have to show them your guns and can simply tell them this.
When federal agents are going door to door to verify gun purchases it means we are that much closer to a national gun registry which will not end well. How long until this disturbing scene unfolds on your doorstep?
Article posted with permission from Matt Agorist
FPC Statement to Concealed Carry Issuing Authorities: Obstructing the People’s Fundamental Right to an Effective Self-defense is not an Option.
Sacramento, CA –-(AmmoLand.com)- Firearms Policy Coalition issued the following statement in response to reports of multiple carry permit issuing authorities across the country refusing to comply with the Supreme Court’s opinion in NYSRPA v. Bruen, which held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right to carry firearms in public:
Quoting the plurality opinion from McDonald v. Chicago, the Supreme Court held in Bruen that “[t]he constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’”
To those authorities that process or issue permits to carry concealed weapons that are abrogating the People’s right to carry: Obstructing the People’s fundamental right to effective self-defense is not an option.
It doesn’t matter if you disagree with the recent United States Supreme Court opinion. It doesn’t matter if there are a lot of applicants. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel like spending time processing them. You are required to objectively process a carry permit application submitted to you without burdensome fees, delays, flaming hoops, and other games. The deluge of applications you’re now experiencing could have been avoided if you simply respected the People’s right to bear arms from the start and not treated it as a second-class right.
FPC refuses to stand idly by while the issuing authorities—who are often law enforcement agencies—delay and deny the People’s right to the peaceable conduct they are entitled to. Your agencies must know that FPC will utilize every available instrument to remedy this ongoing and historical wrong.
Individuals who want to Join the FPC Grassroots Army and support important pro-rights lawsuits and programs can sign up at JoinFPC.org. Individuals and organizations wanting to support charitable efforts to restore the Second Amendment and other natural rights can also make a tax-deductible donation to the FPC Action Foundation. For more on FPC’s lawsuits and other pro-Second Amendment initiatives, visit FPCLegal.org and follow FPC on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.
SACRAMENTO — On a Saturday night in December, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was so frustrated by a Supreme Court decision allowing Texas residents to sue abortion providers that he went straight to social media to call for legislation allowing private citizens to enforce his own state’s gun laws.
It sounded so tit-for-tat that many Californians wondered if he was just trying to get a rise out of one of his favorite foils, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas. Others doubted he was serious because it would have meant embracing a bounty system of enforcement that he considered legally dubious.
Seven months later, Mr. Newsom is not only poised to sign the bill, but he has leaned harder than ever into his rhetoric against Republicans. He ran an ad this month in Florida attacking the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, a possible 2024 presidential candidate. He has rebuked other states for banning abortion and ripped the Supreme Court for its recent decisions overturning Roe v. Wade and giving Americans a broad right to arm themselves in public.
While he has repeatedly insisted that he has no intention of running for the White House in 2024, Mr. Newsom’s actions sometimes seem to belie his statements. The Florida ad — a $105,000 spot worth more in free publicity — turned heads in national political circles. So did his visit to Washington this month and his declarations this spring that fellow Democrats were too meekly responding to Republican moves.
“I think he realizes that Democrats are hungry for a hero,” said Kim Nalder, a political science professor at California State University, Sacramento. “He’s building a profile as an alternative on the left to this aggressive policymaking we’ve seen by Republicans in recent years.”
No piece of legislation better encapsulates Mr. Newsom’s fight-fire-with-fire attitude than the bill co-opting a Texas anti-abortion tactic to enforce California bans on assault weapons and ghost guns.
It aims to bury those who deal in banned guns in litigation. Awards of at least $10,000 per weapon, and legal fees, will be offered to plaintiffs who successfully sue anyone who imports, distributes, manufactures or sells assault-style weapons, .50-caliber rifles, guns without serial numbers or parts that can be used to build firearms that are banned in California.
“No one is saying you can’t have a gun,” said State Senator Bob Hertzberg, a veteran San Fernando Valley Democrat who was tapped by the governor to craft and shepherd the complex legislation. “We’re just saying there’s no constitutional right to an AR-15, a .50-caliber machine gun or a ghost gun with the serial number filed off.”
The bill is the capstone of a sweeping package of firearm restrictions that Mr. Newsom is signing this month. The bills include fresh limits on firearm advertising to minors; intensified restrictions on unregistered “ghost guns”; and a 10-year ban on firearm possession for those convicted of child abuse or elder abuse.
“It’s time for us to stand up,” Mr. Newsom said in late June after the court struck down a New York law, similar to California’s, that strictly limited “public carry” permits. He said then that California had anticipated the ruling and that it was revising state law in ways that would offset “this radicalized and politicized Supreme Court.” He had 16 gun bills heading to his desk, he said, and he planned to sign them all.
The California laws come as mass shootings have intensified pressure for action on gun violence, as death tolls have mounted this year from Buffalo to Uvalde, Texas. Last month, President Biden signed the most significant gun violence legislation to clear Congress in nearly three decades, expanding the background check system for gun buyers under 21 and setting aside millions of dollars so states to enact “red flag” laws that allow the authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people who are deemed dangerous.
But the congressional response, limited by a powerful gun lobby and deep partisan polarization, has been a far cry from the comprehensive solutions that many gun violence researchers feel are needed. And the conservative 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court has signaled an inclination to not only preserve, but also further expand gun rights.
That has left states led by Democrats to seek their own solutions. The search has extended beyond gun violence policies as the court’s rulings have upended reproductive rights and placed L.G.B.T.Q. protections and other civil liberties at risk. Increasingly, the charge from the left has been led by Mr. Newsom, who has had political capital to spare since last year, when he crushed a Republican-led recall.
Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist who now teaches political science at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, said that the governor’s motives were easy to deduce: Mr. Newsom believes his “California way” is a success, and using a national platform to call out Republicans helps rally constituents across the many media markets in his own immense state.
Also, Mr. Schnur said, “He is running for president.”
Mr. Newsom has said that he has “subzero interest” in the White House. “But just being seen as a player on the national stage serves him, even if he never runs,” Mr. Schnur said. “Mario Cuomo played that game for years.”
California’s gun laws are among America’s strictest, helping the state deliver one of the nation’s lowest rates of gun deaths. In 2020, the state’s rate of firearm mortality was about 40 percent lower than the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Public Policy Institute of California has determined that Californians are about 25 percent less likely to die in mass shootings, compared with residents of other states.
California’s gun policies, however, have been strained as conservative federal judges, many appointed by the Trump administration, have taken an increasingly hard line on Second Amendment rights.
The California gun bounty law is expected to face legal challenges that could ultimately land at the Supreme Court. The measure will not take effect until next year and includes a legal trigger that will automatically invalidate it if courts strike down its Texas underpinnings. The National Rifle Association and other gun advocates have argued that current state law already offers remedies for illegal activities by firearm manufacturers and dealers in California.
The same groups have argued from the start that the measure’s bounty scheme could — and would — restrict the Second Amendment, and the American Civil Liberties Union echoed their concerns.
“The problem with this bill is the same problem as the Texas anti-abortion law it mimics: It creates an end run around the essential function of the courts to ensure that constitutional rights are protected,” the A.C.L.U. said in a letter opposing California’s legislation. The group also charged that the legislation would “escalate an ‘arms race’” in creative legal attacks on politically sensitive issues including contraception, gender-affirming care and voting rights.
A recent N.R.A. legislative update said that on this and several other gun bills, they were “looking at all available options including litigation.”
In the meantime, Mr. Hertzberg said, Democrats will use all available tools.
“I don’t agree with the Supreme Court,” he said, “but if Texas is going to use this legal framework to harm women, then California is going to use it to save lives by taking illegal guns off the streets.”
The main problem is and always will be that no mater what the law says someone determined to acquire a gun is not going to care what the law says, after all they are probably already involved in something illegal.
