President Joe Biden boasted Thursday morning as another executive gun control — the ATF’s expanded background check rule — stood poised to take effect.
On August 31, 2023, Breitbart News reported that the ATF proposed a rule essentially moving gun sales toward universal background checks, which is a gun control Congress has consistently refused, for decades, to pass.
The rule announcement came after Gun Owners of America warned Biden was working behind the scenes to use executive action to secure universal background checks. The announcement was also preceded by excitement from Gabby Giffords’ gun control group, Giffords, which anticipated the rule and cheered it.
A press release that accompanied the announcement of the proposed rule and quoted Attorney General Merrick Garland saying:
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was passed by Congress to reduce gun violence, including by expanding the background checks that keep guns out of the hands of criminals. This proposed rule implements Congress’s mandate to expand the definition of who must obtain a license and conduct a background check before selling firearms.
ATF director Steve Dettelbach said, “This new proposed rule would clarify the circumstances in which a person is ‘engaged in the business’ of dealing in firearms, and thus required to obtain a license and follow the laws Congress has established for firearms dealers.”
On April 11, 2024, ABC News quoted Biden boasting about the rule nearing effect, saying, “This is going to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and felons. And my Administration is going to continue to do everything we possibly can to save lives. Congress needs to finish the job and pass universal background checks legislation now.”
The ATFs change in language/definitions related to who is required to submit to background checks for gun sales/transfers is reminiscent of the way the ATF changes language/definitions to equate unfinished handgun frames with firearms, to recategorize pistols with stabilizer braces as short barrel rifles, and to define bump stocks as machine guns.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, and a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Beef is his favorite vegetable. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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