An Iowa Republican senator has sounded the alarm over the possibility that the Biden administration is harassing or coercing firearm owners into legally dubious investigations.
In a letter written Tuesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland, US Senator Joni Ernst stressed that the growing number of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ (ATF) ‘knock and talk’ visits to lawful gun owners are likely unconstitutional and asked to see the legal justification for the visits.
There are several questions that Ernst demanded answers for regarding the recent visits by well-armed ATF agents to individuals who recently bought a gun, demanding to see the weapon and confirm they haven’t passed it off to a third party.
Videos have recently surfaced on social media showing some of those visits, during which the owner of the home is expected to either invite the agents in or go inside and retrieve the weapon they want to see – both moves any sound attorney would advise against.
Garland tried to explain that the ATF’s program is actually aimed at uncovering ‘straw purchases’ – when a person with a clean record buys a gun for someone that is legally barred from buying a weapon.
Ernst demanded to know how many visits the ATF had conducted since last month when Garland announced the straw buyer enforcement initiative.
Expressing concern about what procedures were in place to protect the citizens’ Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted search and seizure, Ernst asked, among other things, what constitutes a probable cause for these visits and if ATF agents were issued a warrant before showing up on the target’s doorstep, and if they’re in fact trying to harass or coerce firearm purchasers into legally questionable investigations.
These visits have ended in some certainly interesting situations such as the one in Columbus, Ohio when one more resourceful gun owner called local police when agents demanded to confiscate a shotgun in his home without a warrant.
He reported that someone that was impersonating a federal agent is trying to take his guns after which local law enforcement officers showed up and promptly arrested the ATF agent.
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