The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been sued by a gun rights group over its regulation of firearm commerce.
Gun Owners of America (GOA) filed a suit with North Dakota gun store Morehouse Enterprises and Bridge City Ordnance against the ATF to push back against the agency’s federal firearms license inspection guidelines that can be used to shut down gun stores.
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President Joe Biden’s administration outlined a plan to combat gun violence in America, and it included a new policy from the Justice Department requiring the ATF to “revoke the licenses of dealers the first time that they violate federal law.”
In 2021, Biden’s administration outlined the ATF can revoke a firearm dealer’s license if they willfully sell a firearm to a prohibited person, fail to do a background check, falsify records, don’t respond to an ATF tracing request, or refuse to allow ATF to conduct an inspection regarding the violation.
Last year, ATF issued a revised order, which established “zero tolerance” guidelines for stores that willfully violate the public’s safety and don’t follow the implemented regulations for gun stores.
The lawsuit claims the “willfulness” as stated in ATF policy that is used to look into the revocation of an FFL is made by a computer algorithm as opposed to a person.
“In other words, willfulness is no longer found by an individual based on facts, circumstances, and the exercise of human judgment. Rather, it is presumed by computer software, based on nothing more than the category of record-keeping violations that are discovered and fed into the computer system,” the lawsuit reads.
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Morehouse Enterprises filed an initial lawsuit in 2022 challenging ATF’s ghost gun rule intended to curb the production of firearms that are typically difficult to trace. Shortly after the suit, ATF investigated Morehouse’s gun store license and found multiple violations, according to the 2022 lawsuit.
“A short time after that lawsuit was filed, BCO [Bridge City Ordnance] was the subject of an administrative compliance inspection conducted by ATF in February of 2023. That inspection was the first compliance inspection ever conducted by ATF with respect to either of the BCO licenses,” the new lawsuit reads.
