Anti-Gunners Sue ATF in Attempt to Name and Shame Gun Dealers

The ATF is doing away with its "Demand 2" program, which placed additional requirements on gun shops that sold at least 25 firearms that were subject to a trace within a calendar year. Gun control groups claim that those FFLs must be doing something wrong to generate that many traces, and under the Biden administration groups like Brady and their allies in the media engaged in a campaign to name and shame those shops once they'd gained access to the list of FFLs who'd received Demand 2 letters. 

Under the Trump administration the ATF is no longer handing over that information under Freedom of Information Act requests, so now Brady has filed a federal lawsuit in attempt to force the agency to give the group reams of information about the now-shuttered program and the FFLs who were subject to Demand 2 requirements. 

"This is information that will save lives. It is information that helps us be able to analyze how our government is regulating the gun industry, particularly the largest sellers of crime guns, and it's information that we need to improve public safety in this country," said Josh Scharff, Brady's general counsel and senior director of programs.

Scharff's claims are bogus. First of all, as even the ATF acknowledged during the Biden administration, being placed in the Demand 2 program is not evidence of wrongdoing on the part of any FFL. Not every gun that's used in a crime is traced, and not every gun that's traced is a "crime gun." Gun shops that have a large volume of sales are far more likely to see more of those firearms subject to a trace, but that doesn't mean that any of those stores are engaged in things like straw purchases or failing to run background checks on buyers. 

The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., for instance, ended up on the Demand 2 list when it was the sole FFL conducting firearm transfers in the District of Columbia. Does Scharff really believe that the D.C. police is a large purveyor of "crime guns"? Brady is misrepresenting the purpose of the Demand 2 program as well as what it meant to be placed on the Demand 2 list... which is one reason why the ATF has halted the program. 

ATF Director Robert Cekada wrote to Congress during his confirmation process that he supported the program's pause. He wrote, "This pause, triggered, in part, by efforts of advocacy groups to mischaracterize the Demand Letter program and evade … disclosure restrictions on firearm related data. This pause is allowing ATF to evaluate the program effectiveness from reporting mandates to tracing results."

In response, Scharff told NPR that, "ATF's decision to withhold these documents really can't be taken out of that narrative. It's impossible for us to ignore that this administration is doing everything that it can to cater to the gun industry and we believe that this is part of that pattern."

I think it's fair to say that under the Trump administration, the ATF isn't actively taking an adversarial stance towards the firearms industry, which was most certainly not the case during the Biden years. Joe Biden declared gun manufacturers were "the enemy" when he was running for president, sought to install an anti-gun activist as head of the ATF, and made do with a more run-of-the-mill gun control supporter when the U.S. Senate refused to confirm Giffords senior advisor David Chipman as ATF Director. 

That doesn't mean that the ATF is or the administration is "catering" to the firearms industry. It means that the focus is now on disrupting gun trafficking networks and putting violent criminals behind bars instead of forcing FFLs out of business and putting gun owners in jeopardy of a federal prosecution and prison sentence for selling a gun from their private collection or putting a stabilizing brace on a pistol. I understand why that bothers Brady and other anti-gun groups so much, but the ATF's decision to keep the Demand 2 letters under wraps is the right call, especially since we've already seen how the gun control lobby will abuse the information it contains to falsely accuse FFLs of aiding and abetting violent criminals.  

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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