Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in suing Biden’s ATF over the new rule requiring background checks on private gun sales.
Breitbart News reported the ATF’s announcement of the proposed rule on August 31, 2023. The rule redefines what it means to be “engaged in the business of selling guns,” thereby expanding the instances in which an unlicensed seller — i.e., a private citizen — must use the NICS to sell or transfer a gun.
The rule largely centers on guns being sold for “profit,” however, on pages 26-27 it equates “pecuniary gain” with “profit,” opening the door for the ATF to redefine the word “sale” so as to require a NICS check when a private seller is “bartering” over a gun.
Page 194 of the 466-page rule makes clear that people who smuggle guns out of the country in order to sell them abroad also under the “dealer” category, following the ATF’s redefinitions.
From the rule:
Unlicensed persons who purchase firearms in the United States and smuggle or take them out of the United States (or conspire or attempt to do so) for sale in another country would be violating 18 U.S.C. 924(k)(2)(B), among other provisions of U.S. law. This is not conduct “wholly outside the United States,”…Accordingly, this rule now clarifies in the definition of “dealer” that purchases or sales of firearms as a wholesale or retail dealer may occur “at any other domestic or international public or private marketplace or premise.”
The rule hedges in law-abiding citizens, using a combination of redefined terms and ambiguity to drive them into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) when selling a gun privately.
RELATED: AWR Hawkins — Universal Background Checks = Gun Registry
ahawkinsBut GOA, GOF, and the State of Texas have filed suit, arguing that the rule will result in “hundreds of thousands of law-abiding gun owners to presumptions of criminal guilt for all manner of activities relating to the innocuous, statutorily authorized, and constitutionally protected private sale of firearms.”
The ATF used the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a piece of gun control fashioned and brokered by Sen. John Cornyn (R), to justify its background check rule.
GOA senior vice president Erich Pratt noted:
We warned the American public that this legislation brokered by Senator Cornyn was no small compromise, and here we are today filing our second lawsuit challenging a major policy derived from that anti-gun law.
Criminalizing untold numbers of Americans for simply selling a firearm in a private party transaction is wrong, unconstitutional, and must be halted by the courts. Anything less would further encourage this tyrannical administration to continue weaponizing vague statutes into policies that are meant to further harass and intimidate gun owners and dealers at every turn.
AG Paxton pointed out, “Yet again, Joe Biden is weaponizing the federal bureaucracy to rip up the Constitution and destroy our citizens’ Second Amendment rights. This is a dramatic escalation of his tyrannical abuse of authority. With today’s lawsuit, it is my great honor to defend our Constitutionally-protected freedoms from the out-of-control federal government.”
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
