ATF Director Steven Dettelbach, came under intense scrutiny today during the House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Oversight of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The hearing focused on a variety of issues concerning the ATF including the Engaged in Business Rule, changes to the Pistol Brace Rule, and the killing of the Director of the Little Rock Airport by the ATF during the execution of a search warrant in March of this year.
“Dettelbach needs to be fired and the ATF needs to be shut down. Ten carloads of heavily armed jack-booted thugs with no body cams rollup on the Airport Director’s house in a wealthy neighborhood. They sneak up to the house and put tape over the doorbell camera. 57 seconds later Bryan Malinowski is dead,” said Dudley Brown, President of the National Association for Gun Rights. “This sounds like the plot of an organized crime movie, but it is just another rogue operation carried out by a bunch of out-of-control nutjobs at the ATF.”
Malinowski was the highest paid municipal employee in the city of Little Rock making over $260k a year and occasionally sold firearms at gun shows as a hobby. Agents were at his home to serve a search warrant to gather evidence to support their contention that Malinowski was “Engaged in Business” under their new rule.
“The problem with the ‘Engaged in Business Rule’ is the ATF Director can’t even tell you what the definition is. He was asked repeatedly today how many firearms you have to sell to be considered in the business, he couldn’t say. The issue with that is you get five years and $250,000 fine if you cross their incomprehensible line. The alternative being they come to your house and shoot you in front of your wife,” said Brown.
Under the direction of the Biden Administration, the ATF released a new rule in 2023 redefining who constitutes a gun dealer, thereby vastly expanding the Background Check System to include almost all gun sales in America. The National Association for Gun Rights has been fighting Universalization of Gun Background checks since the Toomey-Manchin congressional fight in 2013.
“The ATF and Biden are playing definition games with U.S. Code as a means to ban the private transfer of firearms,” said Dudley Brown, President of the National Association for Gun Rights. “The language of this proposed rule gives the government near universal authority to prosecute anyone who transfers a firearm.”
The National Association for Gun Rights is the nation’s largest “no compromise” pro-gun organization, with 4.5 million members nationwide.
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