Black and Buying a Gun? The Government Wants to Know

If you want to purchase a firearm, you’d better be ready to declare your race and ethnicity. Because the government wants to know.

This is a policy that was quietly introduced under the Obama administration in 2012. At that time, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms updated their gun-buyer form to include checkboxes for whether or not you are Hispanic or Latino and to confirm if you are Indian, Asian, Black, White, or a Pacific Islander.

And don’t even think about leaving that part of the form blank. That’s a violation. One that could shut the gun dealer down if he lets it slide.

So, what gives?

Why exactly is this “post-racial” administration keeping track of race when it comes to gun purchases of all things?

A Plan for Backdoor Registration?

The whole situation is hinky.

A lot of things could be going on here. None of them have to do with better law enforcement. Or protecting average citizens from gun crimes.

The ATF says that it is just making its forms complicit with standards set by the Office of Management and Budget in 2003. (Apparently, they just got around to it.)

But critics say there is no federal mandate that gun dealers collect race or ethnicity information from their customers.

You must provide a government-issue photo ID when purchasing a firearm. The dealer also runs a background check. So collecting this information for identification purposes doesn’t make sense.

According to some dealers the forms themselves are being mishandled. The gun dealer holds the forms in question on file. The ATF may request access to specific forms in the event of a criminal investigation. They may also check the forms during a gun dealer audit. But some dealers say that recently, ATF officers have come in and copied their forms … all of them.

It seems possible to me that since gun registration bills have failed to pass, the Obama administration may be building its own “gun registration” database using these purchase forms. That’s pure speculation … but you must admit, it makes sense. Especially given this administration’s history of circumventing Congress to get its way.

The Incremental Death of

Your Constitutional Rights

Now, you may be thinking that this is really no big deal. It’s just a form. Kept on hand by gun dealers, just in case.

But it’s more than that. Over and over again the government is conditioning us to give up our privacy. To blindly accept authority. To put up with violation after violation.

The list of incremental encroachments on your rights is endless. Just a sampling:

• A man in Oregon was imprisoned for 30 days because he collected rainwater on his property.
• In Santa Monica, it is illegal in some cases to smoke inside your own residence.
• Filming a TSA agent is considered “terrorist” activity.
• Under directions from HUD, homes in some Pennsylvania counties are being scanned with infrared technology to track and record their green house gas emissions.
• The National Defense Authorization Act allows the government to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely if they are suspected of assisting terrorists. (I’m sure this will never be misused.)
• And that doesn’t even get into the massive data gathering programs of the NSA, which continue to this day.

In terms of regulations alone, government power has expanded exponentially in the last 40 years. In the early 70s, it took nearly 75,000 pages of documentation to capture all the federal regulations on the books. Today, you need nearly 175,000 pages!

The government wants to know everything you’re doing. And it wants a say in how you’re doing it. Now they’re collecting irrelevant personal data, with no federal mandate, when you try to exercise one of your basic constitutional rights.

If you’re feeling mad right now, then good! You should be.

What You Can Do About It

Unfortunately, there’s no magical solution to the ridiculous level of government encroachment on citizen’s lives. It took a long time for things to get this bad, and it’s going to take a long time to fix it.

But fix it we must. And the starting point is voting for people who favor a smaller government that limits itself to a few, common-sense regulations.

And then holding their feet to the fire when it comes to keeping their promises.

We have an election coming up. Make sure you vote, at every level, for elected officials who share your values.

P.S. If we can’t reverse course on this devastating government trend, either the economy will collapse or we’ll find ourselves dealing with marshal law as the failing government tries desperately to maintain its control. Either situation will turn our cities into war zones and make everywhere in the country less safe. To prepare for what’s coming you need a plan. You’ll find one in my comprehensive Ultimate Self-Reliance Mega-Manual. Secure your copy today.