The ATF is monitoring lawful gun purchases. This is something we now know, though there was reason to suspect it earlier. It's wrong on every level, in part because the commission of a lawful purchase that is part of one exercising their constitutionally protected rights is insufficient ground to justify the gaze of Big Brother in even the worst of conditions.

The fact that it did is remarkably troubling.

Well, at least someone in Washington has as much of a problem with it as I do. That someone is Sen. Rand Paul, who also happens to be the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

And he wants answers.

Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent a letter to Acting ATF Director Daniel Driscoll requesting information on a secretive program that appears to allow the federal government to monitor law-abiding Americans attempting to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

“This kind of backdoor surveillance of American citizens—without due process or public disclosure—should alarm every single person who values the Bill of Rights,” said Dr. Paul. “The ATF and FBI have no business creating secret watchlists for law-abiding Americans seeking to purchase firearms. It’s unacceptable, and I intend to get answers.”

“An activist judge subjected GOA to a ‘gag order’ after the Biden Administration mistakenly gave us information related to its unlawful NICS Monitoring program. ATF and FBI have no business monitoring the gun purchases of American citizens. GOA has since learned that the FBI abused NICS Monitoring to enforce California’s ‘assault weapons’ ban. We are thankful to Chairman Paul and the Senate Homeland Security Committee for opening an investigation into this egregious violation of Second and Fourth Amendment rights.”  Said Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs, Gun Owners of America

The letter follows reporting based on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Gun Owners of America, which revealed the existence of the NICS Audit Log Review (Monitoring) system. The Biden Administration’s ATF mistakenly released unredacted documents exposing the system, and has reportedly spent years trying to cover it up ever since.

According to the exposed documents, the program enables ATF agents to request that the FBI flag and monitor specific individuals using data from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), often for extended periods of time—without those individuals ever knowing.

In his letter, Dr. Paul demands that the ATF provide unredacted records showing how many Americans have been subjected to this monitoring, for what reasons, the legal basis for the program, whether it has led to prosecutions, and whether there has been any misuse by ATF personnel or contractors. The records must be submitted to the committee no later than 5:00 pm on April 24th, 2025.

Dr. Paul highlights in his letter that: “the existence of this surveillance program, and the ATF’s longstanding push to conceal it from the public, raise questions about its general use and its potential to infringe on Americans’ civil liberties.”

The full letter can be found HERE.

That last bit, quoted from his letter, is particularly important.

The fact that they're watching lawful gun purchases is troubling. However, it also explains why ATF agents have shown up at people's doors asking to see firearms they recently purchased from a gun store. It seems that rather than just going to a dealer and pulling a recent 4473 at random, they were informed of the purchase using this system. I was curious how this happened in 2022 when I wrote about that incident, but now it makes sense.

And they should answer to Congress over this because it's so blasted egregious.

This is a monitoring system that has been in place for some time, that the ATF has tried to keep the GOA from exposing after they sent information they claim they didn't mean to send, and now we know what's happening, and if you're not furious, you're clearly not paying attention.

I hope that Sen. Paul is able to get to the bottom of what happened.

I also hope heads roll at the ATF.

Time and time again, we keep seeing the problem of having a law enforcement agency dedicated to regulating a constitutionally protected right, especially when they have not just regulatory powers but enforcement powers. It allows them to think that we, the people, are the enemy.

If this isn't addressed soon, the ATF has the potential to do something down the road that will likely push many of us into making sure that's even more true than it might be today.

Right now, we just don't like them.

If they keep this up, well, let's not speculate on where that would go.