Today we showcase three videos that cover current issues with gun sales and Second Amendment rights. We lead off with an NSSF interview video that covers key actions that will affect gun owners. The first is the adoption of new product/merchant categories that will allow credit card companies to track firearm purchases. This causes concern because it can identify persons as gun buyers when they only purchased outdoor gear or accessories. And it creates the risk of creating a list of gun owners — even though a national registry is forbidden by Federal law.
The first video, from the NSSF, also covers the impact of a recent Executive Order by President Joe Biden. This seeks to impose new types of gun control by fiat — without the approval of Congress. This new Executive Order is also covered in a recent BackFire TV video and a good video from the U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA).
The NRA-ILA explains: “Joe Biden issued an Executive Order on gun control that could accurately be described as a mile wide and an inch deep. There is no doubt what it all adds up to: antagonism toward gun ownership is now the official policy of the U.S. government’s Executive Branch.
Now, Biden is basically directing an alphabet soup of federal departments — including Justice, Health and Human Services, Education, and Homeland Security — to comb through the BSCA and come up with their own plans to implement it to the fullest extent possible.”
NSSF President Discusses Credit Card Issues and Executive Order
Here is a very informative video from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). The video features NSSF President/CEO Joe Bartozzi interviewed by NSSF’s Erik Scarpati. The 20-minute video interview covers three main topics. First NSSF Pres. Bartozzi covers the history of the NSSF and explains its current mission to support the Second Amendment and promote the shooting sports. Second the interview covers some very concerning developments — how Federal agencies are pushing Credit Card companies to track firearms-related purchases. This is being done through the use of Merchant and Product Category Codes. This could effectively be used to create a de facto gun registry, which is specifically prohibited by Federal law. Third the interview covers the terms of President Biden’s recent Gun Control Executive Order.
Significant Issues with Biden Executive Order
Backfire TV head honcho Jim Harmer has built a popular YouTube Channel with over 650,000 subscribers. He is also a licensed attorney based in Utah. In this video, he discusses key items in President Biden’s recent Executive Order concerning firearms. Harmer explains the ways this Executive Order could restrict Second Amendment rights and encourage multiple Federal agencies to interfere with gun owners.
Specifics of Biden Executive Order — Gun Buyer Lists, Red Flag Laws, and More…
President Joe Biden recently signed an Executive Order paving the way for eventual universal background checks, red flag laws, and further gun control measures. In this video, Katie Pointer-Baney, USCCA Director of Government Affairs, outlines what this Executive Order could mean for the future of private gun sales, Federal Firearms Licensees, and the Safer Communities Act.
Here are highlights from the video:
00:00 President Biden’s Executive Order
01:25 What is an Executive Order?
02:28 Accelerating the Safer Communities Act
03:02 How does the Order affect FFLs?
03:20 Law-abiding citizens and private gun sales
05:09 Let your elected representatives hear your viewpoint
How Credit Card Tracking Affects Gun Owners
The use of special Codes for outdoor sports stores is problematical to say the least. There is a real concern that there would be broad over-reporting of sales relating to guns, because the Code would be applied to a variety of purchases.
NRA America’s First Freedom explains: “A person who uses a credit card to purchase a gun safe, a trolling motor and binoculars from a sporting goods store over several weeks or months, as well as any ammunition they might need, will make all of these purchases under the same proposed MCC used for gun sales. If anti-Second Amendment extremists get their way, these purchases could then prompt a credit-card company to report the sales to the authorities. Next, a police officer, or an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), might show up at a citizen’s home to find out why they’ve been buying so much stuff from their local ‘gun store’.”
It appears that, under pressure from Democratic politicians and anti-gun lobbying groups, FedEx and UPS are now providing confidential information to the ATF and other Federal government organizations. There are suggestions that FedEx and UPS are recording shipping data, and also may be monitoring the contents of shipping packages. UPS has adopted rules that require gun stores to provide customer data and even make invoices. Likewise FedEx is asking gun shops to retain customer/content descriptions. The result of the these policy changes could be to “create a database of American gun purchasers”. That is a de facto gun registry, something that is forbidden under Federal Law.
Watch this video for details of new FedEx and UPS gun shipping policies:
The anti-gun polices were, apparently adopted in responses to threatening letters from Democratic Party U.S. Senators including Edward Markey, Dick Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Dianne Feinstein, and Chris Murphy.
“UPS has since adopted new regulations that require gun companies to turn over customer data and allow UPS access to review and examine the shipper’s books and records and provide UPS with invoices for any firearms-related products. All coincidental, of course. This new policy gives UPS the unlimited power and discretion to examine and review any customer documents related to firearms sales.
FedEx now apparently demands that gun store owners retain documents about what specific items those shipments contain and make that information available to FedEx upon request. This would allow these companies to create a database of American gun purchasers and determine exactly what items they purchased.
Recently reported by AmmoLand News, UPS changed its policy surrounding unfinished frames and receivers and even told customers that if it found any packages containing the targeted items, or what the Biden Administration calls ‘ghost guns’, their accounts would be canceled, and the items destroyed.”
18 State Attorneys General Challenge New FedEx and UPS Policies
To counter these policy changes by FedEx, 18 state Attorneys General have sent letters to FedEx and UPS top executives. The letter from the Montana A.G. Austin Knudsen to FedEx asks whether information about gun owners is being provided to Federal agencies:
“FedEx now apparently demands that gun store owners retain documents about what specific items those shipments contain and make that information available to FedEx upon request. These demands, in tandem, allow FedEx to create a database of American gun purchasers and determine exactly what items they purchased.
Perhaps most concerning, your policies allegedly allow FedEx to ‘comply with …requests from applicable law enforcement or other governmental authorities’ even when those requests are ‘inconsistent or contrary to any applicable law, rule, regulation, or order’. In doing so you — perhaps inadvertently — give federal agencies a workaround to federal law, which has long prevented federal agencies from using gun sales to create gun registries.”
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The NRA has joined in an ACLU lawsuit challenging the Federal government’s vast domestic telephone surveillance program. Currently the National Security Agency (NSA) captures billions of telephone call records in a vast data-mining operation. As those records could reveal every person who makes a call to the NRA, shooting club, or gun store, the NRA claims the NSA call-tracking program could be used to create a de factonational gun registry. The NSA and/or other government agencies could easily create a list to identify and locate gun owners: “The government could simply demand the periodic submission of all firearms dealers’ transaction records, then centralize them in a database indexed by the buyers’ names for later searching.”
The NRA argued: “It would be absurd to think that the Congress would adopt and maintain a web of statutes intended to protect against the creation of a national gun registry, while simultaneously authorizing the FBI and the NSA to gather records that could effectively create just such a registry”.
The NRA claims the Federal Government’s telephone surveillance programs is unconstitutional: “The mass surveillance program threatens the First Amendment rights of the NRA and its members. The mass surveillance program could allow identification of NRA members, supporters, potential members, and other persons with whom the NRA communicates, potentially chilling their willingness to communicate with the NRA.”
The ACLU’s lawsuit, ACLU vs. Clapper, seeks an injunction to halt the NSA’s phone-surveillance program and also force the Federal Government to expunge all of its phone call records. Named defendants in the ACLU lawsuit the National Security Agency, the FBI, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Justice. The ACLU has welcomed the NRA’s participation in the lawsuit: “The range of voices joining the protest against mass government surveillance — not to mention the bipartisan storm that has swept Congress since the recent NSA disclosures — is a real testament to the fact that the government’s dragnet surveillance practices are offensive to Americans from across the political spectrum”.
Along with the NRA, other organizations have joined in the ACLU lawsuit against the NSA’s surveillance programs. These include the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and several news organizations including Fox, National Public Radio, Bloomberg News and The New Yorker. In fact even Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin filed supporting briefs. Sensenbrenner is a co-author of the 2001 Patriot Act, which the NSA has cited as authority for its data-gathering program. Sensenbrenner believes that NSA’s vast phone-logging operations have gone well beyond anything contemplated by Congress in passing the Patriot Act.
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Last week in Ottawa, Canada’s House of Commons voted to nullify a long-gun registry law that had been in place since 1995. The bill still needs to be ratified by the Canadian Senate. However, because Conservatives hold a majority in the Senate, most experts believe the repeal of the Registry is a “done deal” as soon as the repeal legislation goes up for final vote in the Canadian Senate.
The Chronicle Herald reports: “The vote effectively puts the registry on life support; all that remains is for the Senate to pull the plug. Since the Conservatives enjoy a commanding majority in the upper chamber as well, the Registry’s fate is sealed.” Liberal Senate leader James Cowan conceded: “They’ve got the majority and unless something extraordinary happens, it will pass.” Unfortunately, the Calgary Herald also predicted that Liberals might try to delay the Senate vote for weeks or even months.
If the Conservatives succeed in dismantling the Registry, tens of thousands of Registry records would be deep-sixed. That idea is popular with critics of the Registry: “the Harper government’s further directive to destroy all the data is a mammoth victory of the people over Big Brother” (Calgary Sun). Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said of the registry, “It does nothing to help put an end to gun crimes, nor has it saved one Canadian life. It criminalizes hard-working and law-abiding citizens such as farmers and sport shooters, and it has been a billion-dollar boondoggle left to us by the previous Liberal government.”
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The Canadian Firearms Registry is a government-run registry of all legally-owned guns in Canada. Compulsory gun registration was written into the Firearms Act (Bill 68) in 1995, which also provided for the establishment of a centralized database. It requires every firearm in Canada to be registered or rendered in an unusable state. This was an effort to reduce crime by making every gun traceable. Any person wishing to obtain a firearm must first acquire a Possession and Acquisition Licence or PAL.
$2 Billion Tab for Failed Gun Registry
The Registry was supposed to cost Canadian taxpayers approximately $119 million dollars. Instead, documents obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation show the program has cost upward of $2 BILLION dollars. At the same time there is little evidence that the Registry has had any notable effect on crime.
There has been intense opposition to the Firearms Registry since its beginnings, and now the drive to eliminate the Registry has gained force. In the NationalPost.com website, Canadian Member of Parliament (MP) Garry Breitkreuz has called for the abolition of the long-gun Registry. MP Breitkreuz has introduced new legislation, Bill C-301, that would dismantle the long-gun provisions of the Registry.
Breitkreuz argues: “The Gun Registry has not saved one life in Canada, and it has been a financial sinkhole, estimated to have cost some $2 Billion. Imagine how many more police we could have on the streets if we had invested more wisely…. We need to dismantle the wasteful, futile registry and abandon the notion that this political pacifier is working.
Bill C-301 will scrap the long-gun Registry, improve efficiency and reduce costs without having any negative impact on public safety. The bill introduces a number of amendments to streamline the Firearms Act…. The Auditor-General has already blown the whistle on the gun registry. My bill proposes to ask for regular independent cost-benefit analyses on all aspects of the firearms program every five years.
Many Canadians have come to realize that the long-gun Registry is merely a bureaucratic exercise designed to lay a piece of paper beside every gun in the country. That piece of paper has no effect on the criminal and does nothing to prevent the misuse of a firearm.”
MP Breitkreuz’ efforts have been applauded by Canadian citizens writing to the National Post:
“[Canada’s Gun Registry] was a ‘paper’ ideological exercise which has proven worse than useless.” — Robins
“The Firearms Act as it exists is an incredible drain on much needed financial resources while giving very little of value in return. Streamlining the redundant, byzantine and costly bureaucracy is a worthy goal”. — Chuckbuster
“The gun registry was SUPPOSED to ‘make our streets safer’. It is beyond me how a slip of paper sent to law abiding persons was ever going to accomplish this task. The registry was always about confiscation of firearms. Despite political promises at the time, that it was ONLY for safety, it has shown itself time and time again, to be a tool of confiscation of legally-owned property. Time for it to go.” — Anopheses
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Last week in Ottawa, Canada’s House of Commons voted to nullify a long-gun registry law that had been in place since 1995. The bill still needs to be ratified by the Canadian Senate. However, because Conservatives hold a majority in the Senate, most experts believe the repeal of the Registry is a “done deal” as soon as the repeal legislation goes up for final vote in the Canadian Senate.
There has been intense opposition to the Firearms Registry since its beginnings, and now the drive to eliminate the Registry has gained force. In the 
