Exclusive: ATF Intimidates Gun Owners With Home Visits

Federal agency attempts to make firearms retailers spy on their customers under new illegal directive

Paul Joseph Watson & Aaron Dykes
Infowars.com
Friday, July 29, 2011

 

Even as it finds itself embroiled in a scandal that saw weapons being deliberately sent to criminal gangs in Mexico, the ATF has issued a letter ordering firearms dealers in border states to report sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles, and is following it up by harassing gun owners with intimidating home visits as well as threatening gun dealers to spy on their customers.

As the Justice Department announced earlier this month, “All gun shops in four Southwest border states (Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico) will be required to alert the federal government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles.”

The ATF letter also orders gun dealers to report to the feds sales of “two or more pistols or revolvers, or any combination of pistols or revolvers totaling two or more.”

The letter, which was subsequently sent out to gun dealers and has since entered the public domain, orders firearms retailers to “Submit to ATF reports of multiple sales or other dispositions whenever, at one time or during any five consecutive business days, you sell to an unlicensed person or otherwise dispose of two or more semi-automatic rifles capable of accepting a detachable magazine and with a caliber greater than .22 (including .223/5.56 caliber).” The directive takes effect from August 14, 2011.

However, what the federal agency isn’t keen to make public is how its agents are using these reports to make threatening home visits to firearms owners, while ordering gun store owners to become de facto informants by telling them to spy on their customers.

According to several gun dealers in Austin as well as one of our own staff members, the ATF is visiting people’s homes, demanding to be allowed inside without a warrant, and implying that gun owners could be terrorists for purchasing two or more firearms at a time.

Illustrating how lawless this is, a central Texas gun dealer who provided Alex Jones with the ATF letter, contacted Daniel Jones, the head of the ATF in Austin two weeks before receiving the letter to ask about news reports that President Obama was going to order the investigation of citizens that bought two or more rifles. Agent Jones told him “no that law is not going to pass, and we can’t enforce something that isn’t law so don’t worry about it.” Of course, the law didn’t pass but the ATF later enforced it anyway.

This is all based on a directive from the federal government that is completely outside of the law and unconstitutional. The law that would have required gun dealers in border states to report sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles to the ATF was “stripped entirely from the text of the regulation” when it came up for a vote in Congress on April 15, but as part of the Obama administration’s dictatorial zeal to accomplish its agenda outside of the law, the program is going ahead anyway.
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