Have you heard of shadow banning? If you haven’t, the phrase is typically used to talk about social media companies not outright removing posts about subjects that they don’t like (like pro-gun posts) but, instead, those social media companies adjust their software so that those posts aren’t suggested to anyone (or to very few people).
It’s their way of saying that they allow free speech and allow people to say what they want while not making those “objectionable” posts easy to find.
So, you may be asking what shadow banning has to do with today’s story, and that’s a great question.
Many people don’t realize that the Biden administration, through the ATF, has, effectively, been working to shadow ban gun ownership by not directly banning gun ownership but by making it harder and harder for legal firearms retailers to stay in business through the ATF’s zero tolerance policy (you can read more about that policy here). But two pro-gun organizations have taken action to take down the ATF’s zero tolerance policy. Michael Clements writes,
Two Virginia-based gun rights organizations have sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) over policy changes concerning federal firearms licensed (FFL) gun dealers.
Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) claim that the policy was rewritten to advance the Biden administration’s anti-Second Amendment agenda.
“This zero-tolerance policy towards lawful commerce guaranteed by the Second Amendment is just the latest example of this Administration weaponizing federal agencies against their political enemies,” GOA Senior Vice President Eric Pratt wrote in a statement on the organization’s website.
“It also is just one more compelling piece of evidence to support gun owners’ demands that Congress defund the ATF.”
Look, the ATF’s zero tolerance policy under Biden takes away any grace for honest mistakes and expects legal gun dealers to be superhuman, to be computers with their paperwork, when, previously, the ATF only went after gun dealers for willful violations.
The fact of the matter is that the ATF can’t even live up to their standards for paperwork, so, it’s insane that they are trying to insist on this from legal businesses. And that’s in addition to the questionable way that this policy was implemented in the first place.
It’s clear that the zero tolerance policy is simply a way for the Biden administration to make it more and more difficult for Americans to legally buy guns by putting legal gun dealers out of business.
The ATF’s zero tolerance policy is wrong, and that policy needs to be canceled.