President Biden is poised to lose his job. Americans are already frustrated with wide-open borders, crime-infested streets, and unaffordable gas, groceries, and rent. Now, his administration has quietly launched a new war on gun owners — and the lawful gun industry — before his executive authority is stripped away.
In an all-too-typical example of executive overreach, a new interim final rule from Biden’s Department of Commerce will vindictively smother American gun companies with layers of bureaucratic red tape and prevent civilians in other countries from lawfully purchasing American firearms and ammunition. This is not only a clear admission of the Biden administration’s disdain for lawful gun owners, but also a backdoor attempt to villainize and bankrupt domestic manufacturers while pushing the president’s globalist agenda beyond our own borders.
Meanwhile, Biden’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has launched its own crusade against Americans’ right to self-defense. ATF’s “Engaged in Business” rule reclassifies gun owners who occasionally sell a firearm as professional dealers, subjecting them to a web of complicated and burdensome regulations with no proven benefits. This rule unconstitutionally expands the agency’s control over ordinary gun owners while also taking another step toward the de facto creation of a national gun owner registry.
Americans have the right — and the responsibility — to fight back.
When the executive branch proposes these restrictions, without the consent of the people’s representatives in Congress, they’re subject to the federal rule-making process. During that process, Americans can submit comments opposing the rule. Those comments must be read by federal officials and should influence the administration’s final decision to move forward with the proposed changes.
While the comment period has closed on the ATF’s business rule, Biden’s ridiculous new firearm export ban is still open for debate. Here’s why you should join us in our campaign of opposition:
First, all U.S.-made firearms are already marked with serial numbers, but this rule would require manufacturers to adopt new export control classification numbers (ECCNs) for additional tracking abroad. This would expand the bureaucratic process — increasing compliance costs and lost revenue for American firearm manufacturers — but it would not improve tracking, seeing as any country can already record serial numbers.
Second, while the rule will drastically restrict sales to foreign civilians, it would not impact exports to foreign governments, which reflects the Left’s fundamental belief that only those in power should have weapons, not the people they govern.
The administration has tried to defend this hypocrisy with bad-faith attacks on civilian gun ownership, falsely claiming that firearms legally exported to civilians are more likely to be diverted into black markets than firearms sold to foreign militaries and police agencies. But virtually every credible analysis of international criminal gun trafficking shows that the biggest sources of guns used for crime or terrorism are government stockpiles and illegal imports, not guns legally imported for lawful civilian sales.
Third, as usual, this additional regulation will do nothing to curb crime at home or abroad. The ATF’s own analysis of international gun crime tracing found that less than 1% of the firearms lawfully exported out of the U.S. between 2016 and 2020 were used in international crime. Just like in the United States, there’s no reason to believe that ordinary lawful gun owners in other countries are a driving force behind violent crime.
The export ban, along with the massive expansion of power at the ATF, are election-year political games designed to appease the president’s radical base at the expense of our constitutional rights. President Biden has demonstrated time and time again his disdain for gun owners and willingness to subvert the American people to advance his agenda.
Our representatives on the Hill have launched efforts to overturn both rules — and they need our support. Heritage Action launched a new campaign to help Americans submit comments in support of protecting the Second Amendment. Together, we can fight Biden’s executive overreach and prevent the suffocation of firearms manufacturers nationwide.
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Kevin Roberts, Ph.D., is president of Heritage Action for America. Ryan Walker is executive vice president of Heritage Action for America.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and not necessarily those of The Daily Wire.