New Gun
Control: Shut Down Shops
Feds confiscating licenses for inadvertent
trivia
By Bob Unruh of
WorldNetDaily.com
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 WorldNetDaily (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 (BATFE) 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, owner of Red’s, which has been
in business 71 years, said he has been battling to keep his stores’ license for
more than six years because of rules infractions such as a missing poster,
which basically says handguns are dangerous around children.
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 BATFE 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license was being withdrawn.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 Federal
Firearms License dealers,” he said. “The dealer’s Federal Firearms License
is then revoked and the dealer must enter an appeals process which is extremely
unfair.”
Pratt told WND, “the power that has enabled the
BATFE 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.
Horsley described to WND his experiences
with those very actions. The BATFE inspection of Red’s in 2000 discovered
various paperwork violations, he said, just shortly after he arrived to take
over the store, mistakes such as a customer failing to write down the county in
which he lived.
In 2001, “they couldn’t find any violations,”
he told WND. A few other minor problems were found later, including a failure
to put up a poster. “I wasn’t alarmed because this agent…had told us we were
one of the best small gun shops he’d ever seen,” Horsley told WND.
Then early in 2006, “We get a letter that ‘We’re [BATFE] revoking your license,’” Horsley said. “I just
came unglued. I couldn’t believe it.”
After an expensive appeal process within BATFE,
he ended up with the same result, and sought out a lawyer for the federal court
challenge. During the appeal process, the penalty had been delayed, so the
store could continue its business. But once the federal court challenge was
filed, the BATFE announced that the store now was a “threat to public safety”
and no longer would be able to acquire firearms.
Horsley told WND he still was allowed to
sell whatever he had, but couldn’t purchase more stock. His stock plummeted
from 1,000 guns to 160 and two workers were laid off before an emergency run to
federal court obtained a ruling from U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge that
allows the store to continue operations – for now.
The judge found “the BATFE speaks of
violations found during the inspections of 2000 and 2005, but fails to reveal
that additional investigations in 2001 and 2007 revealed no violations or
problems.” The judge also noted the BATFE
was exaggerating the situation by “double counting” some violations.
Horsley said the key issue is that the
inspectors make the determination that any errors were “willful.” He said the
first inspection results in a warning for whatever clerical errors are found;
then the next inspection makes the assumption any errors are willful, even if
none of the original mistakes was repeated.
Horsley said one inspector told another – in
front of a store worker who noted the exchange, that, “We’re going to keep
doing this until we find something.” He said the number of gun dealers dropped
from 1994-2005 by nearly 80 percent and revocations are up nearly six times
from 2001-2006.
The BATFE declined to share information on
cases with WND, citing the confidentiality required in an open investigation. But
on a blog on Horsley’s store’s website, Horsley
described one situation that happened just a few weeks ago:
“The ATF came in yesterday at about 10 a.m.
and stayed until around 6 p.m. attempting to find violations to submit to the
judge. They did give us a pass on one of the violations. A customer wrote his
middle initial instead of a full middle name. We let them know that the
customer does not even have a middle name and only an initial. They still told
us they would let that pass. So, I am overflowing with gratefulness right now.
“I questioned Linda Young (the Area BATFE Supervisor)
on the last violation that we did not have our records in PERFECT alphabetical
order, stating that if you wanted to read the policy literally then we should
have to keep all of our records in full alphabetical order and not separated
by year despite this being the way nearly all records are kept by dealers.
She agreed and then stated that she had the authority to overrule procedures
and policies. When I brought up the issue that an ATF Inspector
advised us to keep them in the previous order that we were cited for, she
then stated that inspectors did not 
have
the authority to overrule procedures and policies.
“Why was [the inspector] not cited or
suspended for providing us incorrect information? We were cited for a violation
on incorrect information.”
He continued: “This is not just happening to
us though and it’s becoming a common trend throughout the United States. Why
would we honestly put our license, reputation and over 70 years in business in
jeopardy? We would never condone illegal activity, we have always gone above
and beyond what is asked of us and will continue to do so.”
Horsley’s store, meanwhile, has paid about
$70,000 in legal fees so far to avoid his only other option – to lock the doors
and go away.
Pratt said such actions – and expenses – are
common. One dealership in Texas has already paid about $600,000 in fees and
expenses to fight to retain its license. That case started with the complaint
that bullets from a shooting range near the store were polluting groundwater –
even though no test ever had been done to confirm that.
Meanwhile, the publicity campaigns and
stunts arranged by high-profile activists opposed to guns continue to muddy the
water by making unsubstantiated allegations about gun dealers, they noted.
Jesse Jackson recently appeared at an
anti-gun rally outside a gun shop in the Chicago area, a shop that has been
targeted multiple times. The protesters have claimed weapons sold at the store
have been used to commit murder. “We must turn our mourning into marching,”
Jackson said. He was joined by the mother of Blair Holt, 16, who died in a
gunman’s rampage on a bus. “To all those people watching me:
It could be your child next. So, you better stand up and do something
now,” said Annette Holt.
Jackson compared gun retailers to the
insurgency in Iraq. “These guns are killing police, civilians, they’re killing
our children,” he said. “In Iraq, they’d call that an insurgent’s base.”
Rebecca Hazen, however, had a different
view. She and her husband for years had run Blue Lakes Sporting Goods, also in
Twin Falls, and competed with Red’s. They shut down after their firearms
license was revoked just a few months ago.
“No government agency should have the right
to take away our right to do business,” she wrote. “Without a gun license, we
had no reason to continue our business… I believe government has been unable to
take guns from the hands of citizens or sue gun manufacturers out of business,
so they will use government agencies to revoke licenses one at a time until
there are no stores to buy guns.”
“I encourage every gun owner to step forward
and let their senators and congressmen know how we feel about the BATFE’s power to revoke licenses and close up businesses.
The BATFE should be stopped before there are no guns left to buy. Let your
voice be heard,” she wrote.
Publisher’s Comment
Jim
and Sarah Brady’s The Brady Center to Prevent Gun
Violence, (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.), The Coalition to Stop Gun
Violence, The Million Mom March, and other such organizations that are working
hard to disarm Americans have a powerful ally in the BATFE. It’s appears that
since these folks couldn’t shut down the gun manufacturers, distributors, and
gun shows legislatively, they’ve adopted a more underhanded and stealthful strategy of systematically eliminating gun
shops/dealers.
Folks, the 2nd Amendment to our Constitution was put there
by our Founding Fathers to insure that should our own government become
tyrannical we would have the tools to defend ourselves. The 2nd Amendment had
nothing to do with hunting or target practice! Our present gun control laws so
closely resemble what Adolf Hitler instituted in Nazi
Germany to disarm their people it’s frightening.
The
BATFE must be reigned in and reigned in NOW! I urge everyone to contact their Congressman
and Senator and tell them to put a stop to the harassment and closing down of
law-abiding gun shops/dealers by the BATFE. Tell your friends, neighbors and
family members to do the same.
I
also urge you to obtain a copy of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms’ (JPFO)
85-minute DVD documentary exposing the irresponsible, malicious, and criminal
actions of the BATFE. After just the first few shocking minutes you’ll fully
understand why it’s called The Gang.
It’s a groundbreaking documentary that exposes how this billion-dollar Federal
agency (which was once a minor tax collection department) harasses, oppresses,
intimidates, and terrifies small businesses and decent citizens. For
information on how to order a copy, visit JPFO’s
website at www.JPFO.org. You can also order a copy by calling (262) 673-9745 or
toll-free 1-800-869-1884.
Those
of you who have Internet access, I also urge you to go to Ryan Horsley’s
website www.RedsTradingPost.com. On Ryan’s blog dated
July 5th he alerts folks to something that The National Shooting Sports
Foundation is alerting gun dealers and munitions manufacturers to. The alert
concerns a rule under consideration by the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) to govern the manufacture, transport, and distribution of
explosives. The rule includes small
arms ammunition and reloading components like smokeless propellant and small
arms primers in its definition of “explosives.” If this rule is
implemented as written, it will effectively shut down the manufacturing,
transportation, wholesaling and retailing of ammunition in the United States. This
will affect everyone!
Again,
I urge you to contact your Congressman and Senator and tell them to stop this
OSHA rule from being implemented. Chances are your representatives are not
aware of this stealth attempt to destroy our 2nd Amendment rights. They need to
be informed and informed quickly.
I
know I’ve done a lot of ‘urging’ in this commentary but as our masthead says,
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing.”
