FBI Caught Spying on Lawful Gun Owners—You Won’t Believe Why

Jeff Charles reporting for Townhall 

The ATF and FBI have been monitoring gun purchases made by California residents to bust them for violating the state’s assault weapons ban.

Gun Owners of America (GOA) recently revealed that the ATF and FBI have been using the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to surveil lawful gun owners to help the Golden State enforce their gun control laws.

In a recent “Minute Man Moment” episode, GOA’s Ben Sanderson broke down the operation, noting that the FBI, initially tasked with targeting violent gangs and cartels, has instead been “using unconstitutional investigations, not to enforce federal, but state gun control laws.”

Sanderson explained that federal and state law enforcement officials can request the gun purchasing records of American citizens, including those legally purchasing firearms. When granted permission—which is typical—they can monitor an individual’s purchases for six months without a warrant or judicial review. They are not required to inform the individuals they monitor.

“The FBI has been secretly exploiting the law to hold on to the records longer than the statutory limit of 24 hours,” Sanderson said. This means these agencies have turned what is supposed to be a temporary background check into a months-long surveillance program.

Among the rationales agents use to justify the surveillance, they stated they wished to surveil an individual for being “too poor to own firearms based on her reported income.” In another instance, they surveilled a citizen for purchasing a shotgun during the George Floyd protests, reasoning, without evidence, that he probably intended to use it during the riots.

“Why is the FBI investigating state crimes and using a gun owner’s possible purchase of an AR-15 as justification for federal law enforcement to monitor citizens?” Sanderson asked. They concluded by calling on Director Kash Patel to end what they describe as a “rogue agents"

The ATF used a similar method to target Dexter Taylor, a Brooklyn native and software engineer who is now serving a ten-year sentence for building his own firearms. He was arrested after a 2022 SWAT raid. During his trial, the judge forbade his defense attorney from mentioning the Second Amendment during the proceedings.

“I think as these civil rights investigations progress, we're going to find that the biggest scandal is the casual ease with which the supreme laws of our Republic have been violated -- by agencies which are supposedly responsible for law enforcement,” Taylor told Townhall.

Taylor further noted that “a famous President once said (quoting Scripture) that a ‘house divided against itself cannot stand,” and that “The same is true of a house that undermines its own foundation.”

Governments are dangerous: that is part of their nature. But they are ten times as dangerous when they work themselves into a moral panic.

GOA, in a post on X, shared a form it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The ATF and FBI use this form to request access to an individual’s gun purchase records.  When a person under surveillance purchases a firearm or gun parts, the agency is notified within four hours.

The form GOA published was filled out by an official with the FBI’s Chicago field office. The officer appeared to be targeting an individual in Chicago, Illinois. The state passed an assault weapons ban in 2023. The officer indicated that the person was suspected of manufacturing, selling, transferring, or otherwise illegally possessing an assault weapon.”

This suggests the target could have been a California resident who purchased a firearm in Illinois or Indiana, which might have triggered the surveillance.

Kerry Slone, founder of We the Female, noted that this revelation is not shocking. “Given the fact that the Federal government has been complicit in tolerating unconstitutional infringements, it’s not surprising that they would leverage a broken NICS system to abet in the overreach of State law,” she said. “Yet again, the only individuals not impacted by processes like this are the same ones who get their firearms from the black market.”

This revelation should be receiving far more attention. Federal law enforcement agencies should never surveil Americans without a warrant or judicial proceedings. It seems clear that agents are using this system as a fishing expedition, hoping to catch people who live in states with onerous gun control laws.

Republican commentator Shermichael Singleton characterized it as “yet another example of bureaucratic overreach and a violation of the Constitution, which is why so many gun owners continue to urge the president to continue to take swift actions to dissolve all Biden-era Second Amendment encroachments.”

President Donald Trump in February issued an executive order instructing the attorney general to conduct a review of federal agencies to root out any rules, regulations, or practices that violate the Second Amendment. This practice, as well as others, should clearly become a priority for the administration.

“As Americans who care about fundamental rights – such as the right to keep and bear arms – we have a lot of work to do,” Dexter Taylor observed.