By Lee Williams
Ira Levin has owned and operated Legend Firearms in Monroe, New Jersey since 2009, which is no small feat given the Garden State’s blatant antipathy toward guns, gun owners, and gun dealers.
Levin has conducted more than 21,000 firearm transactions, and has been inspected dozens of times by both the New Jersey State Police and the ATF. They have never found a deficiency, at least not until Joe Biden declared war on gun dealers.
During a recent inspection, an ATF Industry Operations Investigator, or IOI, found several “deficiencies” and now Levin’s Federal Firearms License is in jeopardy.
His crimes?
A few customers wrote “USA” on the 4473 because they mistakenly thought the form asked for their country rather than their county. Levin’s staff did not catch the errors.
Also, one of his part-time employees transferred firearms to three customers more than 30 days after they had signed the 4473. The ATF inspector said Levin’s employee should have had the customers fill out another 4473 before they took possession of the guns, because the form expires after 30 days.
To be clear, all the customers passed their background checks. None were prohibited persons, and the ATF never seized the firearms from the three customers.
Levin believed ATF would issue a warning or impose a small fine for the paperwork errors…until he received a letter stating that the ATF intended to revoke his license. The revocation letter was signed by John Curtis, an industry operations director at ATF’s New York City Field Office.
Curtis did not return calls seeking his comments for this story.
Levin recently had a preliminary video call with Curtis and other ATF officials, which he hoped could save his license. They told him he could appeal their decision at an administrative hearing. Levin asked who would preside over the hearing and was told it would be Curtis.
“Curtis signed the revocation letter and now he is going to run the hearing. How is that right?” Levin said. “Shouldn’t the person making the decision be objective?”
Levin works in the small gun shop with his daughter Bailey, whom he hoped would one day take over the business. Like most small shops, they’re not getting rich, they’re getting by.
“I am a decorated Air Force veteran and now my government wants to take away my livelihood.” he said. “This is not the country I swore to protect and defend.”
National trend
Joe Biden first announced his zero-tolerance policy in June 2021. Part of his scheme included five criteria, which he claimed defined a rogue dealer: transferring a firearm to a prohibited person, failing to run a required background check, falsifying records, failing to respond to an ATF tracing request or refusing to allow ATF to conduct an inspection.
To be clear, Levin violated none of these rules. However, the ATF is now routinely revoking licenses for even the most minor of errors – errors not on Biden’s five-point list.
As a result, a special report we published in May revealed that FFL revocations increased a staggering 500 percent.
According to a story written Wednesday by an anti-gun activist at The Trace – the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun empire, which was republished in USA Today – an ATF spokesman declined to comment on the 500 percent increase in FFL revocations.
Instead, the ATF said the revocation process is lengthy and that “the number of licenses recommended for revocation might often exceed the number of licenses actually revoked.”
The spokesman claimed ATF revoked 92 licenses in 2022, which The Trace said was the highest rate in 16 years.
The same story quoted former ATF agent David Chipman, who was Biden’s first choice to run the agency until the gun-rights community successfully scuttled his nomination.
Chipman, a paid anti-gun activist now working for the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University, told The Trace activist he was encouraged by the revocation data.
“The trendline is good,” is quoted as saying. “I think we have to applaud the agency for holding the industry accountable – for doing its job.”
No due process
Levin isn’t the only gun dealer to complain about a lack of due process in ATF’s revocation process. Nor is he the only FFL to claim Biden hopes to eliminate guns by eliminating gun dealers.
Said Levin: “The ATF is no longer pursuing criminals. It has become a political arm of the White House. These ATF agents – they’re no longer worried about what’s right and wrong. They’re worried about their jobs. This is all part of Biden’s zero-tolerance policy for gun dealers.”
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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.
“…He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance….”
– Declaration of Independence, list of grievances
ATF, FBI, IRS, et al…
Exactly…
it’s the 90’s witch hunt all over again….then it was Hillary, now it’s Biden…we went from well over 250,000 ffl’s to about 40,000.. often for the most trivial of reasons…while sitting at my kitchen table with an ATF agent, she told me not to even try renewing my license because “they weren’t approving any”….her advice was to wait till the next election and try again
Was that her genuine personal opinion, or a scripted statement provided from her superiors?
Feature. Not bug.
You Haz The Answer.
Pure evil. I wish the very best for these fine Americans! FJB
Stupid question but do we have a history or tradition of a bureaucracy determining whether someone has the legal privilege of selling firearms to a law abiding citizen?
THAT is an EXCELLENT question, good sir.
“We” dont have said tradition, but there is a history of limey redcoats trying to do this some 245 years ago…
remind me how it turned out for them?
They need to sue the ATF immediately for harassment and violating their 2A constitutional rights to sell firearms.
There has to be a way to legally attack that bullshit…
That’s what they want. If you’re spending money in court fighting the bureaucracy, you’re not spending it on keeping your store open. Store closes, they get to expand their registry with the paperwork you now have to keep for the life of the business.
Filing cabinets made of thermite would be big hit for retirement/going out of business parties…
Reparations. Americans have consistently had their human and civil rights violated by criminals under the color of law.
We need Nuremberg 2.0. And when it is over and the culprits and their supporters have had their assets seized and distributed to the victims then we can rebuild America.
“We”
I suppose you mean China?
becuase it’s not ‘Our’ country anymore
They got possums in China?
will polarized and focused efforts overcome media and election control? i think a majority is pissed enough, but much has been usurped.
No president in the history of this country has ever gotten more votes for their second term and still lost. Trump didn’t just get a few more votes. He got 11 million more and expanded the base. Obama got fewer votes for his second term and still won. Why would someone get fewer votes (millions) for their second term anyway? Hmm…
the circumstances lend themselves to suspicion…a huge Trump surge early on that seemed to surprise the opposition…then a steady trickle of Biden votes throughout the night until they had enough to win…many of them mail-ins with questionable legitimacy…sandwiched around some weird circumstances…we all know this government has done some strange things in the wee small hours….was this one of them?
I’d say yes based on all of the shady things I’ve seen. The difference came down to about 40,000 votes in three swing states. The way you really know something’s up is because they cancel, put down, and censor anyone who questions it. What are they afraid of?
Assuming the votes were legitimate, Brandon would have lost if the intel community, Big Tech, and the media didn’t collude to censor the laptop story. Either way you look at it, it was rigged.
Because more people voted for Biden than voted for Trump because Trump was making a life out of pissing people off. Not hard to figure out. I’m a Republican and I voted for my Dog over voting for Trump. The base you are talking about will go to be Bernie voters. They aren’t republicans.
Like everything the ATF does is perfect. Pot calling the kettle black.
they’re an agency heavily dependent on funding and thus easily influenced…they tend to do what they’re told….
We have a problem. One part is the ATF attacking FFLs. The other part is the states attacking gun carriers. In each case, it’s Goliath against individual Davids.
There is a solution for this sort of problem. We know what it is. It’s the same concept as “Self-defense legal” “insurance”.
No individual David can afford to face a persecutor in court. Not in a case of self-defense. Not in the case of an FFL license revocation. Not in the case of carrying in a gun-free zone. So, we are all of us – each one of us – a powerless David facing a Goliath. We don’t need to hang separately. We can hang toghether.
All we would need to do is to persuade one of the self-defense “insurance” organizations – or form a new organization – to underwrite a mutual defense pact. Each of us pays a modest premium – might be just $100 for gun carriers or $1,000 for FFLs – to defend us in case of persecution.
Bear in mind that it is sufficient to raise a heavy burden on the ATF and DAs that if they want to persecute us they will have to spend lots of taxpayer money in the process. We might not win many cases, but we will compel them to make their cases in court rather than get us to cave and cop a plea (or accept revocation of an FFL).
ATF and DAs don’t actually care that they are wasting taxpayer funds. But they do care that their budgets are finite. Every $100,000 they spend persecuting a case against us is $100,000 that they can’t spend on something else. They would much prefer to spend money hiring more staff to push more paper than on a lawyer’s time persecuting a case in court. There is a risk of losing in court. There is no risk involved in hiring a couple of clerks to push paper.
Remember, the landscape changed with Bruen. Every case that comes up after June 23, 2022, must overcome text, history and tradition. Government has a nearly insurmountable barrier to surmount. If we put enough money into hiring lawyers to press our cases judges, appellate judges and SCOTUS will have to start awarding us victories.
We just need to muster our resources as we have don with “self-defense legal” “insurance”.
Shouldn’t have to pay someone to protect our rights.
Shouldn’t have too but I’d chip in if someone was to give someone a ” tune up”.
yep
This is not OUR government, it’s THEIR government. Time to fire them all, move it to a conservative state more centralized on our continent and rebuild it to a minimalist government like our founding fathers vision. No agencies and a congress that is only in session for 2 months a year. Add a 10 or 12 % flat tax and no IRS. Also term limits on all federal jobs.
Your right, this is not Our government.
We are at war and sleepy Joe is the traitor in chief. Why do you think he is so focused on disarmament? You can’t invade the US because there will be a man with a rifle behind every blade of grass.
We need a 20% reduction of the management of all the federal LE alphabet bunch, then tell them to focus on actual criminals not malium prohibitum.
Law enforcement at the federal level is very tricky, the states are supposed to handle that. The Feds come in when it is an interstate crime. Now, with all the agencies having their own legal arm, ve can haf more Gestapo! Ya, ya, very gut!
David said “you will not mock the GOD of Israel. You put your faith in your sword and your spear. I put my faith in the GOD of Israel , I will cut your head off with your sword!” I like the courts ok, but will keep praying to the GOD of Israel, and hand loading.
On behalf of my ancestors, “You’re welcome!” 🙂. Samuel HaNavi ( Repeating a message from G-D ) tried to warn the Elders what you get with having earthly “Kings”. They would not listen. 🙄
Does anyone still believe that Mr. Potato Head isn’t trying to start a civil war, and is being helped by a corrupt government.
Just wait until Brandon has all 87,000 extra IRS agents hired.
Scary ain’t it.
They aren’t expanding the IRS to go after the ruling class. Get ready.
IRS audits the poor at 5 times the rate of everyone else, analysis finds
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-likely-to-get-audited/
https://trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/679/
Duh. They assess a fine and if you ain’t got lawyers you gotta pay.
The poor don’t have lawyers.
I honestly doubt they’ll audit the middle class much, they’ll assess fines calculated to be less than what it would cost to fight them. Unless someone’s going to take a serious stand on principle, they’ll pay.
‘….they’ll assess fines calculated to be less than what it would cost to fight them.’
It works for speed traps.
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden……
Hunter Biden is just fine, all that FBI investigation stuff is smoke and mirrors.
And the big guy whispers to sonny boy, ” Dont worry son, I’ll take care of this.”
They’ve had all they need to indict Hunter for years now. They’ll probably wait until after the midterms and give Hunter a slap on the wrist. Then the propagandists will proclaim how fair the Puppet’s DOJ is for “going after” his own son.
Delaware prosecutor now gets to make the call…what are the odds he’ll get one before he does…
In my experience, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, when .gov declares war on “falsifying records” what they mean is “We’re going to crawl up your ass and look around for clerical errors so we can screw you to the wall because you’re politically disfavored”.
And you can tell that’s what they mean because even blatant falsification by .gov employees earns, at most, a slap on the wrist. This is even true here.
Honestly, this is why I sorta prefer more corrupt countries. It’s never cost me more than $1K to make such a thing go away overseas.
People say that’s terrible but in reality, those places have a negotiable price for truth which can be settled with currency. In the US the truth is priceless. Not because .gov is honest in the US, it’s the same racket as overseas, but because there’s a serious supply shortage of truth in the US and there has been for at least 50 years. At least overseas I can buy some truth and honesty. Here, it’s unobtainium because that’s how a truly corrupt system functions.
When the process and compliance become the punishment, you’ve already gone off the cliff in some regards.
👍
I’ve been to this place. It’s actually inside the Union Hill Gun Club/Range. Nice people running a very legitimate business (not a kitchen table FFL by any means).
it’s in new jersey…that was the first mistake….
We need to support FFLs in gun grabbing states. We start giving up states that need our support and the war will be lost.
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