Federal government uses covert tactics to violate Second Amendment

The federal government has been using covert tactics to crack down on Americans who purchase firearms and to strip others of their ability to do so, according to recent reports.

Documents obtained by gun rights organization Gun Owners of America (GOA) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been working with the FBI to monitor law-abiding Americans for gun purchases without obtaining a warrant.

The general process usually begins with the ATF requesting that the FBI begins tracking a certain citizen's gun purchases. The FBI then places that individual in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which covertly monitors the individual. An analysis by The Epoch Times reveals that the ATF appears to target minorities. 

Justifications for these surveillance requests are many times innocuous, such as low-income status. In Arizona, for example, a man who had a reported income of $2,839 was registered in the NICS because he shouldn’t have been able to afford several guns.

“In my experience, someone with this amount of income would not be able to afford 20 firearms,” one ATF agent wrote.

Similarly, a Texas man was subjected to a manual background check for the simple fact that he had no reported work history.

One FBI agent wrote to an ATF liaison that his “targets” were “purchasing an abundance of firearms without a license or known financial means to obtain the product.” 

In 2020 a black man in Florida was monitored every day for four months because, as the agent wrote, “Based on my training and experience, I have not seen a legal firearms purchaser purchase approximately 30 firearms in a 120-day window for their personal collection.”

“Some agent just decided that is enough Second Amendment for you this year,” commented Robert Olson, the attorney for Gun Owners of America (GOA) who obtained the FOIA request.

A man in Wisconsin was placed under surveillance because an agent had seen text messages in which the man was buying and selling guns.

An ATF agent also asked the FBI to flag a man in Arizona for dealing in gun parts — specifically lower receivers, which form the bases of rifles.

“In my experience, it is common for people to purchase large number of AR-15 style lower receivers, build them into rifles, and sell the rifles for profit,” the agent wrote as the reason the man should be placed in NICS.

The ATF flagged a Hispanic woman in Texas for tracking after the bureau received an anonymous tip that she had purchased ten firearms in two weeks.

“If they had probable cause, they could seek a warrant from a judge, but they aren’t doing that,” explained Olson. “They are just deciding they have some reason to believe a certain person’s exercise of Second Amendment rights needs to be monitored. And it’s their own system so they make up their own standards. There doesn’t appear to be any oversight here.”

The NICS system is only supposed to be used to prevent those who are prohibited from purchasing firearms from doing so.

“Congress needs to rein in this rogue agency by either exercising oversight over it or abolishing the unconstitutional agency altogether,” GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt told The Epoch Times.

Other documents obtained by the GOA show that the federal government forced people to declare themselves incompetent — and therefore prohibited from purchasing a gun — so that they can be registered in the NICS system. The Washington Examiner reports that between 2011 and 2019 the FBI, Secret Service, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement coordinated to force at least 60 people to declare themselves a “danger” to themselves and/or others or “lacking the mental capacity” needed to own a firearm.

In at least one instance, it appears this was done as part of a plea deal. A federal prosecutor who evidently could not prove mental incompetence made a plea bargain contingent on the individual admitting to his own lack of mental capacity.

"There's a bit of a contradiction," said constitutional attorney Gilbert Ambler. "They're having you agree you're incompetent. If you're incompetent, how is that a binding agreement?"

Olson added that US citizens cannot legally forfeit their gun rights, adding another layer of dubious legality to the government’s actions.