In movies like Enemy of the State, Americans are shown a dystopian world where government surveillance turns ordinary citizens into targets, with shadowy agencies tracking their every move without oversight or accountability. Sadly, this Hollywood nightmare is now reality.

During the Biden administration, federal agencies like the FBI were secretly monitoring law-abiding gun owners through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) — tracking their lawful firearm purchases without a warrant and without ever informing those being monitored. Even Congress was kept in the dark. What once seemed like fiction is now a troubling truth, as the federal government turns its surveillance powers inward against its own people, eroding the freedoms it was meant to protect.

For years, the FBI has been surveilling the gun purchases of thousands of law-abiding citizens using the NICS system. This daily NICS Monitoring program operates without the requirement of a warrant or probable cause, and entirely outside the purview of any court. It enables federal agents to select a target for surveillance and receive a notification every time the victim purchases a firearm. Surveilled Americans have no way of ever knowing they are being tracked.

None of this information is new. Gun Owners of America has reported on the FBI’s NICS Monitoring abuses at length, and the FBI’s warrantless surveillance program has been the subject of a years-long Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) lawsuit pitting GOA against a belligerent and uncooperative Department of Justice.

Ongoing NICS Monitoring Abuses

Naturally, being free to operate entirely without legal standards or judicial oversight, federal agents have rampantly abused NICS Monitoring, surveilling individuals engaged in all manner of innocuous activities. Without any accountability, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) requested NICS Monitoring of individuals who purchased firearms in response to social unrest, those whose firearm expenditures appeared disproportionate to their income, and even persons who bought and sold firearms as a hobby.

During the Biden administration, federal agents even directed their surveillance toward ordinary Californians — like a modern-day Panopticon, where prison inmates can be secretly watched without knowing when. In a recent FOIA production, GOA discovered that the FBI had been assisting in the enforcement of anti-gun states’ “assault weapons” bans. The FBI actually used NICS Monitoring on one individual for suspected violations of California’s unconstitutional gun regime — despite there being no evidence of any federal wrongdoing.

Thankfully, Pam Bondi’s DOJ recently ordered the FBI to end the Biden-era practice of using NICS monitoring to help enforce state gun laws. But who knows how long this practice has been occurring? Because with such a low bar for monitoring, perhaps you have also been NICS Monitored, maybe for nothing more than a Facebook comment or a bumper sticker, or attendance at a political rally. Of course, you would never know either way.

FBI Weaponization Against January 6 Protesters

Now, GOA has discovered that the FBI’s surveillance program goes further than previously thought. Recently obtained FOIA documents reveal the NICS Monitoring of a person suspected of being present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In fact, in one June 6, 2023 NICS Monitoring submission, an unnamed FBI agent requested NICS Monitoring of an individual’s lawful gun purchases for a period of six months, for several “violations or potential violations” that are common J6 charges:

18 U.S.C. § 231(a)(3) – Civil Disorder;
18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1) and (2) – Restricted Building or Grounds;
40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(E) – Impeding Passage through the Capitol Grounds or Buildings.

Of course, this should come as no surprise. After all, the Biden-era FBI was no stranger to victimizing thousands of Trump supporters associated with January 6. On January 6 itself, the U.S. Capitol was crawling with FBI informants, seemingly directed to frame those attending the President’s “Save America” rally.

In the days that followed, the FBI aggressively collected cell phone data of those who had been present in Washington, DC, often without a warrant. The FBI even improperly accessed information collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to target purely domestic persons and activities. And in the twilight hours of the Biden regime, the Department of Justice continued to raid suspected January 6ers’ homes, with FBI operations extending well into December of 2024.

But now, the United States has a new Attorney General. And when Pam Bondi took her oath of office, she promised to end the rampant “weaponization” of the FBI and to close Biden’s chapter of hyper-partisanship and two-tiered justice for good.

That promise will ring hollow if NICS Monitoring is not dismantled. So long as the mechanism remains in place to surveil gun owners’ lawful purchases — especially with no judicial approval or oversight — there is little stopping a future administration from resuming the abuses of Biden’s FBI.

What once seemed like the stuff of Hollywood thrillers has become a sobering fact of American life. The secret surveillance of lawful gun owners through NICS Monitoring is not just a bureaucratic overreach — it’s a direct assault on the freedoms that define our nation.

To restore trust in our institutions, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel must act swiftly to end warrantless spying on law-abiding gun owners. Americans should not have to live in fear that exercising their rights will land them on a secret government watchlist. We are not characters in a movie — we are citizens of a free republic, and it’s time our government remembered that.

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Erich Pratt is the Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America, a national grassroots organization representing more than two million gun owners, and can be followed on X @erichmpratt.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Gun Owners Aren’t Criminals: It’s Time To Dismantle NICS Monitoring