Commenting on Biden's Attempt to Outlaw Private Gun Sales

If you wish to comment on the new regulation proposed by Biden to ban or at least potentially ban all private firearms transactions and require a license to sell or attempt to sell even a single gun, please comment on Regulations.gov. GunOwners of America has a suggested comment and you can comment through their site or directly. Note: If you want to copy their comment and post directly, it may contain too many characters to submit, even though it says there are characters left.

You can comment up until 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) on Thursday December 7th.

Rule is here.

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(the latter link can be used to see if your comment will get flagged for too many characters, the actual limit is lower than what you are told, and if you use the first link, you might be told "invalid characters" when you try to submit it - the second link it will notify you in real time as you type).

Comment through the Gun Owners of America site.

Note: This post is in bold, except for the comment.

I am Opposed to this Unconstitutional Rule

It disturbs me that ATF has weaponized the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act as a backdoor to enact Universal Background Checks and Firearm Registration by demanding that gun owners who sell a few personal firearms suddenly now must become federally licensed as gun dealers.

The ATF’s proposed rule ATF 2022R-17 is not only unconstitutional but also misinterprets federal law and must not be finalized.

1. ATF is wrong to suggest a single firearm sale—or no sale at all—might require a license:

ATF’s rule claims that the agency “even a single firearm transaction, or offer to engage in a transaction, when combined with other evidence, may be sufficient to require a license.”
However, the statutes enacted by Congress clearly do not intend to regulate the conduct of an individual who merely sells a single firearm. Instead, 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(11), (21), (22), and (23) clearly contemplate regulating someone who “regular(ly)” and “repetitive(ly)” either (a) manufactures and sells or (b) purchases and resells multiple “firearms.”

2. ATF fails to protect unlicensed conduct exempted by Congress:

Additionally, Congress also expressly exempted “occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby.” According to Congress, ATF cannot presume anyone to be “engaged in the business” of dealing in firearms simply because they sold a few guns on a few occasions. In contrast, ATF’s rule provides no such assurances.

3. Wrongfully licensing constitutionally protected activity will lead to warrantless searches and additional constitutional violations:

Moreover, by selling a single firearm—and thus purportedly coming under the jurisdiction of the ATF as a newly-minted gun dealer—private gun owners can now be subjected to warrantless searches of their homes and their firearm collections. This is a clear violation of both the Second and Fourth Amendments, and it runs totally contrary to the Supreme Court’s Caniglia decision in 2021.

In that case, the Biden administration fully supported the ability of law enforcement to conduct warrantless searches of firearms in the home as part of a so-called “welfare check.” But the Supreme Court ruled against the Rhode Island police—and the Biden administration—with a 9-0 vote. Now, the Biden administration is trying to implement warrantless searches though the back door and without even having a vote in Congress.

4. ATF suggests it might deny a license to applicants who the agency ordered to become licensed:

One footnote in this proposed rule suggests the ATF might prevent a person from obtaining a license to even engage in future firearm transactions because they were presumed to have “willfully engaged in the business of dealing in firearms without a license,” but if such an individual, were to submit an application to obtain a license to deal in firearms, ATF’s footnote suggests the law-abiding individual might be denied the license simply because their previous conduct (even before this new rule) was presumptively (not objectively) unlawful. Thus, law-abiding citizens wishing to avoid any legal grey area created by this ATF rule are damned if they do get a license, and damned if they don’t!

5. ATF’s backdoor Universal Background Check includes Universal Firearms Registration:

So-called “Universal Background Checks” are only enforceable with a gun registry. Regulating private citizens as gun dealers will force them to run background checks on every firearm transaction in a backdoor attempt to require private citizens to create, maintain, and eventually turn over these registration papers (i.e. Forms 4473, Multiple Sales Reports, and Acquisition and Disposition logs). Failure to fill out registration paperwork and create a paper trail for even a single firearm transaction will be considered a federal crime.

The Biden Administration described this as “moving the U.S. as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation.” And the rule is only enforceable by cannibalizing the existing commercial federal firearms license and background check system into an unconstitutional, illegal gun registration scheme for all firearm sales.

But as ATF checks in on private transactions, those who privately transfer a firearm without a license and who do not maintain federal gun registration paperwork will be presumed by ATF to be in noncompliance with the law. As such, this rule exceeds statute and infringes on the constitutional right protected by the Second Amendment.

6. The administration has been working overtime to revoke federal firearms licenses, meaning that people wishing to sell personal collections might not be able to get the permission to do so.

[End of comment] That is all.