“They are basically tracking—without a warrant—every gun purchase by these people,” Rob Olson, an attorney for Gun Owners of America (GOA), told The Epoch Times. “There’s no legal process here. At best, this is highly questionable, if not outright unlawful.” Also, known as a firearms registry.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been tracking gun owners without a warrant in a coordinated system with the FBI, according to documents exclusively reviewed by The Epoch Times.
Hundreds of pages of documents produced to Gun Owners of America from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit show ATF agents telling the FBI to daily monitor specific people through the federal background system when they lawfully purchase guns.
The records show dozens of ATF agents requesting the monitoring of law-abiding people through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) The FBI calls this secret system with the ATF the “NICS Monitoring Services.” This is a manual, daily check of firearm sales to see if a specific person buys a gun for as long as the ATF agent wants.
By Emily Miller