The ATF Has Resumed Openly Murdering Americans

[sunny225]

mises.org/mises-wire/atf-has-resumed-openly-murdering-americans

The ATF Has Resumed Openly Murdering Americans

Many people who know anything about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE, or ATF for short) will know they started off as a “harmless” tax collecting agency that eventually turned into a law enforcement agency in its own right. In other words, they evolved from a bunch of glorified robbers with mechanical calculators and spreadsheets into a gang of violent thugs with guns and badges. This transformation became obvious to the world in the famous Ruby Ridge (1992) and Waco (1993) incidents, both having had heavy ATF involvement and with the latter event culminating in an open massacre of the Branch Davidians that included women and children.

Later as they have cooled their trigger fingers, the ATF’s side gig of deliberately allowing guns to flow into Mexico for “tracking purposes” was exposed in the Fast and Furious scandal after two of these guns turned up near the scene of the killing of Brian Terry, a border patrol officer, in 2010 (a whole of lot of good this “tracking” did).

In more recent years, ATF’s favorite pastime has been to send several car-loads worth of thugs LARPing with full tactical gear to raid and intimidate American licensed gun dealers for supposed infractions of federal firearms laws and confiscate their property. Jim Skelton had his business raided in 2021 after a federal entrapping weasel lied on the federal background check forms and successfully purchased several firearms (a whole lot of good this “background check” did). Russell Fincher was raided at his home in 2023, one of the reasons being that he sold firearms without a Federal Firearms License (FFL), even though he had one. He was yelled at, threatened, and ultimately intimidated into giving up his license.

However, lately the ATF must have been having the blues and reminiscing about the good ol’ days when they could get some solid trigger time on some innocent Americans instead of just yelling at them and stealing their stuff, because just a couple of months ago they raided the home of Bryan Malinowski and shot and killed him.

Malinowski, executive director of the Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, was an avid gun collector and would frequent gun shows to buy and sell firearms with other private individuals, which is completely legal and does not require an FFL. His frequent buying and selling of guns prompted the ATF to consider him as “engaging in the business of selling firearms” and therefore violating a federal law by not having an FFL (what the actual threshold is, nobody knows). They thus obtained a search warrant and proceeded to serve it in the most dangerous way possible.
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[Jolly]

Incendiary piece.

There are two sides to this story.

1. What Malinowski did was most likely illegal. By purchasing a fairly large number of guns (>100) and then privately reselling them will get the BATmen's attention. They supposedly had an informant, had taken one of his previously owned firearms off of a known gang member in California and undercover agents had purchased firearms from him at gun shows as private-to-private sales.

I was a Class I dealer for twenty years. Such behavior will definitely out you on BATF's radar. The warrant for his search was proper.

2. What was wrong was how the warrant was served. Malinowski had no previous criminal history and at worse was possibly guilty of improper sales of firearms. Two agents, with warrant in hand, could have talked to him at his office or even telephoned him to tell him they needed to talk to him. A pre-dawn raid with overwhelming force was unnecessary and should not have been done. In fact, no-knock raids have been severely curtailed under an executive order by Biden.

I'd like to know the entire truth.

[wildhorseluvr]

Whether legal or illegal is largely determined nowadays by whether you’re Dem or Republican.

[David!]

Jul 8, 2024 13:47:37 GMT Jolly said:

Incendiary piece.

There are two sides to this story.

I'd like to know the entire truth.

You will never know the truth. Everyone telling it has an agenda and dramatic headlines sell. No one will click on it otherwise. It’s why I haven’t watched the news in years. 

[Ozarks Tom]

It's the mentality within these agencies that needs to change. They're all trying to "out-Rambo" each other with their "shock & awe" raids, with the very predictable results of someone who shouldn't have a gun getting trigger happy.

David Koresh (Branch Dadidians) could have been arrested on one of his many trips to town. Randy Weaver (Ruby Ridge) could have been easily talked to by one or two agents any time he left his cabin. Malinowski certainly wasn't a hermit holed up in a cave, he could have easily been contacted and asked to come in for an interview.

But no, those wannabe Rambos have all that training and guns, if they never used them someone might ask why they paid for them. Which is a good question all in itself - Department of Education, IRS.

[wildhorseluvr]

How many Dem suspects are subjected to shock and awe raids? Just wondering.

[sunny225]

The ATF is a corrupt agency, just like the EPA, the BLM, the FBI, the IRS, the CONgress, the senate, the executive branch, state govts, etc. Politics is what ruins everything it touches.

[farmrbrown]

If these transactions are truly illegal, can anyone show me this in the right to keep and bear arms written in the 2nd amendment?
Oh I know all about the thousands of firearm "laws" written after the fact over the last 100+ years, but what I'll remind people of, is that not every so called illegal act is backed up by a "law' that is constitutional.
In fact when you examine them carefully, most of them aren't.

[sunny225]

Jul 9, 2024 1:53:55 GMT farmrbrown said:

If these transactions are truly illegal, can anyone show me this in the right to keep and bear arms written in the 2nd amendment?
Oh I know all about the thousands of firearm "laws" written after the fact over the last 100+ years, but what I'll remind people of, is that not every so called illegal act is backed up by a "law' that is constitutional.
In fact when you examine them carefully, most of them aren't.

You are correct in your analysis. They won't stop this sort of thing until they are stopped.