⚠️Unfortunately, there are 2 false statements & 3 misleading statements in
@ATFDirectorRC's post about the FBI's warrantless "NICS Monitoring" program⤵️
1️⃣ "[NICS Alerts] are NOT used to monitor lawful gun purchasers." FALSE.
Think about what this means: If a person passes NICS and the transaction proceeds, the person is, by definition, legally permitted to make that purchase. So how can the federal government claim NICS Alerts are not being used to monitor lawful gun purchasers? Either lawful purchasers are being monitored—or the government is allowing firearms to be purchased by people it believes are prohibited from possessing them (and is gunwalking firearms… again). It can't be both.
2️⃣"The NICS program is managed very well by the FBI." FALSE.
Under President Biden, the FBI weaponized the background check system—which was designed to check if a purchaser was prohibited from possessing firearms and if not to immediately delete all personally identifying information—into a gun purchase spy program that alerts your local police department. Examples included, monitoring people: because they spent too much money, or because they bought the same guns as their roommates, or because they were at the Capitol on J6, or because they might violate California’s “assault weapons ban.” And while the ATF under this administration has scaled back its requests, the NICS program continues to be used in ways that violate sections in federal law which:
❌Prohibit a NICS registry (34 U.S.C. 40901(i)),
❌Require lawful gun owners’ names to be deleted (18 U.S.C. 922(t)(2)(c)) &
❌Require lawful names to be deleted within 24 hours (118 Stat. 95).
3️⃣"[NICS Monitoring] is NOT a secret program." MISLEADING.
While the program is public now, "NICS Monitoring" was a secret until an ATF whistleblower told GOA and
@AmmoLand about it—and the employee was subsequently disciplined and indicted for having shared the existence of the program with us.. Since then GOA has submitted several Freedom of Information Act requests, but to no avail. On this issue, the ATF and FBI have ignored repeated FOIA requests and took 400+ days (and a subpoena threat) to respond to
@SenRandPaul's request for records.
ATF even obtained and is currently enforcing a GAG ORDER that restricts GOA from releasing certain documents we obtained about this secret program. GOA is appealing to the D.C. circuit and is backed by every major newspaper, including
@NPR,
@nytimes,
@TheAtlantic,
@Reuters,
@WSJ,
@washingtonpost,
@politico,
@axios,
@propublica,
@Forbes,
@FACoalition,
@theintercept,
@TheMediaInst,
@MediaNewsGroup,
@NFOIC,
@PressClubDC,
@NPPA,
@newsalliance,
@newsguild,
@ONA,
@RTDNA,
@sejorg,
@spj_tweets,
@SPLC,
@voxdotcom, &
@rcfp.
4️⃣"[NICS Alerts] are NOT used to enforce state gun control laws." MISLEADING.
GOA has proven that
@ATFHQ helped California enforce its "assault weapons" ban during the Biden administration. ATF Director Cekada is only correct insofar as the system is not currently being abused (1) in this manner (2) by ATF (3) right now. What will happen as soon as we get another anti-gun Democrat president in the White House?
5️⃣"Only 61 ATF NICS Alerts remain active today." MISLEADING.
While this may be true about ATF NICS Alerts, ATF is not the only law enforcement agency using the FBI's NICS Monitoring program. GOA uncovered thousands of NICS monitoring alerts that were set up in the past by
@USMarshalsHQ,
@SecretService, and even
@USArmy. We are grateful that
@ATFHQ has limited its use of this unlawful FBI system since GOA exposed it. The Trump Administration should not downplay the abuse of the program under the Biden Administration or the current extent of its use by other agencies.
Also, the Director revealed an important piece of information: These are “bonified [sic] NICS alerts.” In other words, the ATF is receiving real-time notification when lawful purchasers buy firearms. The obvious questions are: What statutory authority permits this monitoring? And what judicial authorizations—aka, warrants—are required before the government can monitor a person’s otherwise lawful firearm purchase?
