Imagine doing everything right in your business, but still being vilified by someone who despises your entire industry? On one level, it’s not like they were going to be customers anyway, but on another, they’re trying to paint you as a criminal despite doing everything you can to do things correctly. It’s not your fault that they your products keep ending up in the wrong hands within a few years after you sell them.
That’s exactly what Brady likes to do with their “name and shame” tactics. They don’t really have any evidence that certain stores are doing anything wrong beyond a “time to crime” that’s within three years, which isn’t as indicative of something like a straw buy as some might like to think, but that’s never stopped them.
What did stop them, though, was the ATF no longer playing ball with the gun control organization, which prompted Brady to file a lawsuit.
And the NSSF is firing back at the organization and its intentions behind the judicial action.
The gun control group Brady: United Against Gun Violence is hopping mad that their “name-and-shame” charade no longer enjoys government support. They’re so mad, in fact, the group is suing to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to violate federal law, risk law enforcement safety and release data so they can twist a media narrative to falsely accuse firearm retailers for the criminal misuse of firearms.
Brady filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to force the DOJ and ATF to answer their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information surrounding the Demand Letter 2 Program. That program, begun during the antigun Clinton administration, requires firearm retailers to provide additional information to the ATF when 25 or more firearms are traced back to them subsequent to the recovery at a crime scene and the time from retail sale to trace is three years or less (what ATF calls “time-to-crime”) in a calendar year.
This information is protected from public release, and for good reason. The Tiahrt rider, which has been reauthorized by Congress since it was passed in 2003, restricts public access to sensitive, law enforcement-only firearm tracing data. This restriction is supported by Congress, ATF and law enforcement groups such as the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) because it secures sensitive tracing information which would jeopardize ongoing criminal investigations and put the lives of law enforcement officers, cooperating retailers and witnesses at risk.
Brady would rather have their media “name-and-shame” narrative instead of protecting the lives of law enforcement investigating illegal firearm trafficking cases.
Protecting Against Abuse, Law Enforcement Lives
Former ATF Acting Director Michael Sullivan wrote of the importance of safeguarding firearm trace data and not using this information as a political football.
“If the Tiahrt Amendment were repealed, it could seriously undermine, if not eviscerate, the critically important investigations ATF special agents and local law enforcement are building to bring illegal firearm traffickers to justice,” former Acting Director Sullivan wrote. “However, it’s becoming clearer that some within the administration see this as a calculated opportunity to set the conditions for a ‘name-and-shame’ effort to smear firearm retailers and manufacturers, at the expense of ATF’s important and well-executed mission, which includes relationships with those in the industry who also want to keep firearms out of the hands of prohibited persons.”
He added, “The ATF has long held that firearm trace data isn’t to be used as a political tool.”
Gun control groups like Brady, Michael Bloomberg’s gun control mouthpiece for Everytown for Gun Safety, The Trace and others have abused this information to smear firearm retailers as somehow being complicit in crimes for which they have no responsibility. NSSF has been critical of the misuse of this protected firearm trace data to attempt to “name-and-shame” firearm retailers for crimes in which they had no involvement.
And let’s be real here, that’s exactly what this is about.
Absent any other evidence beyond tracing data that may or may not have anything at all to do with the store in question, there’s no real reason to link them to criminal activity, especially since that tracing data generally only points to the initial sale and not what happened after the gun left the store. A gun that’s stolen from someone’s car after leaving the gun store might return a trace just days after the initial sale, but is it Bubba’s Gun & Tackle’s fault? Obviously not.
Then there are straw buys, which are how many guns enter the black market. There are some straw buys that are obvious, but a whole lot more of them aren’t, especially with people who are buying with the intention of selling them to prohibited persons later on. These people don’t show many of the tell-tale signs of a straw buy. Can a store be held responsible because someone didn’t display certain behavior they’ve been told to watch out for?
As for Brady and their use of this data, as noted above, it’s not intended for political purposes, but that’s what Brady and The Trace are all about. They’re exclusively about using this information to try to shape political opinion in such a way that it justifies infringements on our Second Amendment rights. Part of that is because most people really don’t understand what they’re looking at with this kind of thing, and it’s not like the “journalists” at The Trace are going to accurately inform them.
So, any supposed right they had to access that information–and that was always more of a privilege anyway, since it wasn’t actually public information in the first place–vanished. I’m glad they can’t keep trying to pretend that every gun store in America is really just trying to put guns in criminal hands for some inane reason.
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of jackwagons.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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