Sometimes anti-gun bias in the media can be a little hard to detect. It's not always about what's included in a story; calling gun control groups or gun control laws "gun safety" organizations and measures or portraying support for the Second Amendment as something only found among "right-wing extremists."
On occasion, the bias is revealed by what's missing from a story. That's the case with a new piece by USA Today that purports to explore some of the changes made and proposed by the ATF during President Trump's second term. USA Today investigative reporter Nick Penzenstadler sat down with Dana Taylor, host of the paper's "The Excerpt" podcast, to discuss several ATF-related topics, but in my opinion, Penzenstadler neglected to give her or the audience several pertinent pieces of information.
The gun violence prevention folks were aghast at a lot of these rules, particularly this rollback of engaged in the business. And what that means is, where is the line? Are you going to gun shows and are you a hobbyist or are you routinely selling several guns every month, processing credit cards, this is your main source of income? That the Biden administration put in as the rule, that you are no longer just a hobbyist, you are quote unquote engaged in the business of selling guns. One of the key rollbacks that was announced recently is ending that policy and going back to a different policy of hobbyists have a little bit more leeway to do that.
Penzenstadler was asked why the Trump administration "wanted this change," and the USA Today reporter replied that "the idea behind this change was we have groups out there that are selling, they need to be licensed, but the director made the point that they measured the impact of new registrations and they saw it as minimal. So they didn't think that this was being an effective rule change."
What Penzenstadler didn't mention is that the rule had already been declared a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act by a federal judge, who ruled that the ATF went too far in writing the "engaged in the business rule" by going beyond the definition written by Congress. The language adopted by the ATF declared "there is no minimum threshold number of firearms purchased or sold that triggers the licensing requirement.
Similarly, there is no minimum number of transactions that determines whether a person is “engaged in the business” of dealing in firearms. For example, even a single firearm transaction or offer to engage in a transaction when combined with other evidence (e.g., where a person represents to others a willingness and ability to purchase more firearms for resale), may require a license;
The language adopted by Congress in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, on the other hand, explicitly defined a gun dealer as a "person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business to predominantly earn a profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms, but such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms."
The ATF rule was put in place by the Biden administration in an attempt to impose universal background checks on gun sales without congressional approval. The Trump administration had already declined to continue defending the rule after the federal court decision came down, and the ATF's proposed rule simply codifies what is already reality: the Biden-era rule is unenforceable and an abuse of power.
I don't know about you, but I'd say that's a fairly important part of the backstory about the proposed rule to repeal the Biden-era "engaged in the business" language.
Penzenstadler also gave an incomplete account of why the ATF is ending its "Demand 2" list, which consists of gun stores that have had more than 25 or more firearms traced to them in a year with a "time-to-crime" of three years or less. That list was never publicly available until a few years ago, when the Biden administration gave that information to gun control organizations, who in turn shared it with reporters like Penzenstadler.
The USA Today reporter acknowledged that the list contained "lots of big box dealers, people who sell the most guns," but added that the list "also reflects where crime guns are coming from."
If you're wondering where crime guns are being sold and where straw purchasers are targeting gun shops, here's the list. And of course this caused this tension because the gun industry did not like this attention. They say it unfairly characterizes them. And the director yesterday was saying this was not intended to be used this way and the data is being manipulated. That's why it needed to be paused. So another interesting part with this whole debate is Andrew Clyde, the Georgia Republican is a gun shop owner himself and his shop is on that list. It was selling more than 25 guns that have turned up at crime scenes and he's sensitive to that and said it put his shop on a list and unfairly targeted him.
The Washington, D.C. Police Department was also on that list, because for a time it was the only entity conducting firearm transfers in the District. And a gun didn't have to be used in a crime to be traced. Found firearms, guns that were being carried, and other non-violent incidents are often more common reasons for a gun to be traced, and industry members were right to be upset that the list was being used to declare anyone on it "bad apple" gun dealers.
The slanted viewpoint expressed by Penzenstadler might not be as bad as the paper relying on a spokesperson for Everytown or Giffords, but it's still hardly viewpoint neutral. By failing to inform its readers of all of the facts, USA Today gives them the impression that the previous administration did nothing wrong, and that the Trump administration is simply indulging the gun industry when that's hardly the case.
