On Wednesday, a lawsuit was filed against the Biden Administration for its efforts to revoke licenses for gun dealers, as part of its broader attempt to suppress Second Amendment rights.
The Daily Caller reports that the lawsuit, filed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), argues that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is violating the 1968 Gun Control Act due to attempting to take away dealers’ licenses over mere paperwork mistakes. The ATF first implemented this policy in 2021, attempting to use the 1968 law to punish gun dealers who make any mistakes in their paperwork, even though the law specifically dictates that only “willful” paperwork violations, not accidental ones, can be prosecuted.
In June of 2021, the Biden Administration issued a memorandum expanding on its planned gun control actions, including orders for the ATF to begin carrying out license revocation proceedings against even single violations of the 1968 Gun Control Act. As a result, license revocations have skyrocketed by over 500 percent.
Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Michael Cargill and his company Central Texas Gun Works (CTGW), who will be arguing on behalf of all of their customers.
“In most of these instances, these are not people who transferred a gun to a prohibited purchaser,” said Matt Miller, senior attorney for TPPF. “In other words, they didn’t give a gun to a criminal, or to a kid. They just committed simple paperwork violations, and the administration is now using that to revoke these licenses.”
The lawsuit further reveals that even the ATF’s own investigation of CTGW determined that, with an error rate of just 0.5 percent across 35 different transactions, the company never let a gun be purchased by someone who was prohibited from doing so.
Nevertheless, the lawsuit points out, the bureau’s new policy means that even “accidental typos and other minor paperwork errors could cost business owners their livelihoods.”