New Gun Control: Shut Down the Gun Shops
The liberals have been unsuccessful in overriding the second amendment to the constitution, the right to bear arms, and also unsuccessful at driving the gun manufacturers out of business, so they are doing what liberals do best…abusing the system, in this case, using the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to pull gun dealer’s licenses over minor paperwork oversights.
The liberal thought…if no one can buy guns, then eventually, no one will own guns. QED.
The government is using paperwork errors as small as the abbreviation of a city name to shut down some of the nation’s longest-serving gun shops, and 2nd Amendment advocates fear the right to bear arms will mean little if there’s no way to obtain a gun.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Larry Pratt, of Gun Owners of America, told WND while confirming that as recently as 15 or 20 years ago, there were 250,000 licensed gun dealers in the United States.
Today, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told WND, there are 108,381, and if more cases involving dealers such as Red’s Trading Post of Twin Falls, Idaho, develop, that number will plummet quickly.
Ryan Horsley, a spokesman for Red’s, which has been in business 71 years, said the store has been battling over its license because of rules infractions such as a missing poster for more than six years.
He’s launched an online petition asking Congress to intervene and halt the “blatant targeting of law abiding dealers.” It also seeks a “fair, constitutional and speedy appeals process” and has attracted thousands of signatures.
His company also has a federal lawsuit pending against the ATF over its announcement that Red’s firearms dealership license was being withdrawn.
Attorney Mark Geston said the case asks the court to review the statute and the “propriety” of the decision that was made.
Horsley said the reason Red’s is facing a revocation is – at most – insignificant paperwork mistakes.
“Imagine having your driver’s license revoked because you did not completely spell out the word ‘no’ when answering a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question on your application five years ago,” his petition asks.
He told WND the inspectors begin with efforts to locate any petty violation they can, usually clerical mistakes. “They list these errors as ‘willful’ which Congress set in the wording to protect FFL dealers,” he said. “The dealer’s Federal Firearms License is then revoked and the dealer must enter an appeals process which is extremely unfair.”
He said essentially the appeal of a ATF decision goes directly to the people who originally made the decision.
“This is the equivalent of being in court and having the prosecuting attorney act as an adviser to the judge,” Horsley said. The result forces the business, if owners want to continue operating, to sue in federal court.
Pratt told WND, “the power that has enabled ATF to take away people’s licenses to do business” continues unabated.
Pratt said many gun dealers were closed down when Congress allowed local municipalities to recommend denial depending upon the location of the gun dealership.
And he noted a family gun business that had been operation in Baltimore, Md., for years was attacked because of the “wanton, repeated crime” of abbreviating Baltimore as “Blto” on the “teeny, tiny spaces on the forms provided by the teeny, tiny little minds.”
The agency holds, he said, a “continuing animas against gun owners and dealers.”
The inspectors have no handbook under which to operate, and the absence of such written procedures allows them to be arbitrary and capricious.
Original Link.
