“Baltimore sues ATF over gun data denied in public information request,” The Baltimore Sun reports. “The lawsuit, filed alongside gun control advocates Everytown Law on Monday, challenges a decision made by the ATF to reject a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the city this fall for information including the top ten sources of guns used in crimes in Baltimore from 2018 to 2022.”
It figures Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown would team up with a Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns city and its gun-grabbing Mayor Brandon Scott. It’s also fair to figure ATF’s new “leadership” under citizen disarmament zealot and Director Steve Dettelbach really doesn’t mind being sued. If he “loses,” that will undermine the Tiahrt Amendment, an appropriations provision that currently forbids ATF to release information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation.
His boss wants it, his boss’s supporters want it, and face it, he wants it. After all, it’s only taxpayer money the administration will spend “defending against” it, and this is a chance to advance a long-time gun prohibitionist priority. Because the other thing Tiahrt does is blocks any data released in those investigations from being admissible in civil lawsuits against gun sellers or manufacturers, and that’s unacceptable to the people whose mission is to force gun dealers to close shop and to cut off “legal” source of supply to citizens.
That doing so will just mean the only sources left open are the “illegal” ones hardly matters to power monopolists who look at more “gun violence” as a “beneficial” way to gin up demands for more “gun control” edicts. Along with chilling private sales by arbitrarily changing the term “engaged in the business,” ATF has been rushing a full-court press on “legal” sources with so-called “zero tolerance” FFL revocations.
Add to this subversion from the bench, as with the Jimmy Carter-appointed federal judge, John L. Kane — may his treasonous, idiot name live in infamy — who went through so many legal contortions his head disappeared when he ruled the Second Amendment doesn’t include a right to acquire arms. As Constitutional scholar Edwin Vieira Jr. noted in Kolbe v. Hogan:
“This reliance on a permanent private market for firearms guaranteed that most militiamen, through their own efforts, could always obtain firearms suitable for both collective and individual self-defense, and forestalled tyranny by precluding rogue public officials from monopolizing the production, distribution, and possession of firearms.”
“There is no reason why the identities of gun stores that are the top contributors to gun violence in Baltimore should be kept hidden from the public and from city officials,” Mayor Scott asserted in his press release announcing the joint public/private (i.e., “fascist”) lawsuit.
Of course, there are, and the pre-Dettelbach ATF stood by them:
“BATFE has fought for years in the federal courts to keep trace records confidential, because they contain information (such as names of gun buyers) that could jeopardize ongoing investigations—not to mention law enforcement officers’ lives. For example, a suspected gun trafficker could search publicly released information for names of “straw purchasers” he had used to buy handguns, or for traces requested on guns he had sold. That information could lead him to names of officers, informants and witnesses against his crimes.”
The other “reasons” are obvious: The prohibitionists want to sue dealers out of existence and are using spurious allegations parroted by their complicit media partners to add another con to their repertoire of rights swindles.
They know if there really were “bad apple gun dealers” flouting the law, an ATF that destroys livelihoods for seeming kicks would have them shuttered and their inventories and records confiscated in no time. No one has more incentive to dot all the “i’s” and cross all the “t’s” than an audited-up-the-uh… wazoo FFL.
That Baltimore’s own law-enforcement can initiate a trace whenever they recover a gun from a crime scene isn’t “good” enough for them, because they know that’s not the way violent street criminals get their guns. Per DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics’ survey of prisoners who “had possessed a firearm during their offense:
“Among these, more than half (56%) had either stolen it (6%), found it at the scene of the crime (7%), or obtained it off the street or from the underground market (43%). Most of the remainder (25%) had obtained it from a family member or friend, or as a gift. Seven percent had purchased it under their own name from a licensed firearm dealer.”
It’s not licensed dealers deliberately turning a blind eye to gamble it all on a bad sale with bad odds to an obvious risk.
What’s unknown, and would be fair to ask (especially since ATF is always trying to work around it and moaning about not having a searchable gun purchase database), is how many homicides have been solved where the major clue was a gun found at the crime scene belonging to its original “legal” purchaser. With all the howling going on to mandate confiscation-enabling registration, it would be nice to put that into perspective and look at bang for the buck as far as that pretense goes.
As indicated, demands to gut Tiahrt are hardly new, and Democrats have shown no aversion to playing fast and loose with the law to undermine it. Back in 2011, I reported on Rep. Adam Schiff trying to weasel his way “to allow Congressional committees to be included on the list of entities to which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms can disclose part or all of the contents of the Firearms Trace System database,” and asked a question that will probably forever remain unanswered: “How did Sen. Feinstein get ATF gun trace data in violation of [the] Tiahrt Amendment?”
The quest continues. It’s not like “progressives’ actually have any new ideas.
What obvious is Scott and the city fathers have no solutions for reining in violent crime because to do so would involve cracking down on the lawless relatives of their Democrat constituents who keep them in power. We know it, Everytown knows it, and they know it.
And the thing is, if they get this infringement, it’ll just be on to the next, moving right down the Everytown ban list. Denials shielded in “commonsense” lies notwithstanding, of course they’re talking about taking your guns. All of them. All you’ve got to do is listen.
But they’ll gulp down, whatever they can get, one bite at a time.
So, they put on these public horse and pony shows, and the media sends credulous “reporters” out to trumpet political frauds taking credit for a temporary dip in this year’s still shameful homicide numbers — as if their policies will do anything but ensure more over the years to come.
When that happens, and it will, they’ll blame your guns. And you.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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