Many Second Amendment supporters are rightfully suspicious of the government, especially when it comes to going after gun owners. There have been legitimate and serious issues with how federal, state, and local law enforcement have conducted themselves in the past, and my guess is that will also be the case in the future.
That doesn't mean, however, that we should be blindly accepting of every gun owner who claims to be the victim of anti-2A agents of the State. Trust, but verify, as Ronald Reagan said. Otherwise, you could end up backing someone who doesn't really deserve your support.
You might remember a guy named Tommy Michael VanHoose, whose Montana gun store was raided by the IRS back in 2023. Among the items seized by agents were ATF transaction forms, which included purchase prices and customer information. VanHoose was quick to claim that he was being targeted by the Biden administration because he was an FFL and outspoken defender of the Second Amendment.
VanHoose ended up getting charged with five counts of submitting false tax returns. And in news that wasn't widely covered, he pleaded guilty to a single count last October. At the time, he was fighting cancer, and his attorneys successfully sought a delay in his sentencing. According to his attorneys, he had successfully completed treatment, and he was scheduled to be sentenced earlier this month.
Scheduled. It turns out he wasn't sentenced because he skipped out on his court date.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris issued a warrant for VanHoose’s arrest on Oct. 8. A day later, VanHoose’s defense attorneys filed the paperwork to remove themselves as his counsel.
... Then on Oct. 14, a man who said he was negotiating to buy VanHoose’s firearms business submitted a victim impact letter to the court. The prospective buyer said that when he asked for profit-and-loss statements earlier this year, VanHoose provided statements reflecting the same underreported income that led to his conviction for tax fraud.
“Mr. VanHoose used the same falsified financial records he pled guilty to falsifying — while his criminal case was before this court and while sentencing was being continued — to attempt to induce me to purchase his property at an inflated value derived from false income figures,” the prospective buyer, David Bissell, wrote in his letter to the federal court.
VanHoose had been trying to sell his business, Highwood Creek Outfitters, back in 2023 when an undercover IRS agent posed as a potential buyer. Court documents said that VanHoose’s real estate agent told the undercover agent about “off the books” income that was “substantial.”
VanHoose himself later gave the undercover agent a tour of the business in May 2023 and repeatedly said that he didn’t report 20% of his gross receipts to the IRS, according to court documents. The IRS investigation eventually found that he skimmed around $450,000 for himself and underreported his income by $1.4 million over five years, resulting in an unpaid tax liability of $442,254.
The issue with the IRS seizing ATF records that contained customer information was and is a genuine concern, but that doesn't mean that VanHoose was an innocent victim.
At the very least, VanHoose has admitted falsifying a tax document and underreporting his income. The guy who was trying to buy VanHoose's business earlier this month says that VanHoose was still misrepresenting his financial records as he was trying offload his gun shop, which could be another crime altogether.
I'm sure that Tommy Michael VanHoose has his own side of the story to tell. The problem is that he's apparently gone on the lam, so he's not really in a position to share it with the rest of us. And since actions speak louder than words, his decision to take off rather than face the music doesn't exactly help his argument that he's just an innocent victim.
Government agencies really can abuse gun owners, and support for the Second Amendment might actually lead to political persecution in some places. Still, we shouldn't be so quick to accept the claims of every Tommy, Dick, and Harry who say they're the victims of government overreach, and we certainly shouldn't turn them into folk heroes unless there's solid proof that they're being railroaded.