On Thursday, I covered a pair of New Mexico lawmakers who are calling for a new state-level licensing system for gun dealers. In their initial remarks, the legislators relied heavily on a new “report” by Everytown for Gun Safety that alleges more than 930,000 firearms were likely trafficked between 2017 and 2023, “supplied by gun dealers—Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs)—who either knowingly or negligently turn a blind eye.”
That assertion leaves no room for the idea that any of these FFLs were duped by straw buyers, and utterly ignores the fact that FFLs are often the ones to contact law enforcement and voice their concerns about a potential straw buy. It’s a heavyhanded attempt to blame federally-licensed gun sellers for the actions of criminals, and to use that scapegoating to crack down on the FFLs.
As Lee Williams reports, Everytown’s “study” was spearheaded by Marianna Mitchem, a former ATF official who joined the gun control group after departing the agency back in August.
Mitchem’s coauthors, Nick Suplina and Chelsea Parsons, both worked for the New York State Attorney General’s Office and are longtime Everytown staffers. As you can imagine, the three authors worked hard to target President Donald Trump and his administration for its pro-gun stance.
The ATF under President Joe Biden, the authors claimed, “used crime gun intelligence to shut down known trafficking networks and identify the worst-of-the-worst dealers.”
But at no point did Mitchem or her team ever mention the harm and loss of life the ATF committed under Biden, such as the killing of Bryan Malinowski, or the false charges filed against Patrick “Tate” Adamiak, which led to his undeserved 20-year prison sentence that he is still serving.
Instead, the authors claimed that targeting gun dealers will “protect our communities from gun trafficking.”
Mitchem and her colleagues have a long list of bad ideas to offer lawmakers when it comes to the state-level licensing of gun dealers; from mandating expensive security features to requiring dealers to send a record of sale to state officials (and thereby creating a backdoor gun registry). As Williams notes, trying to comply with all of Everytown’s “suggestions” would be impossible for many smaller shops, who would almost certainly shut down instead.
These so-called “requirements” are, quite frankly, a joke. They would put nearly every gun dealer out of business, a fact which I am sure was not lost on the authors.
Besides, gun dealers are licensed by the federal government. They do not need a state license, or state and local inspections, and they should never be required to provide state or local officials with the names of gun purchasers.
Also, establishing a “minimal threshold for responsible business conduct by gun dealers” to allow the dealers to be civilly sued if their firearms are ever misused, is ludicrous. This, too, would put the dealers out of business, which, again, is exactly what the authors want.
And you can bet that any “minimal threshold for responsible business” would be vague and undefined to make it as easy as possible to sue gun sellers.
According to a former ATF official who spoke to Williams, Mitchem was former ATF Director Steve Dettelbach’s “puppet” at the agency; a go-to deputy who was behind the ATF’s frame or receiver ruling as well as the agency’s flawed list of “ghost guns.”
If law enforcement officers could not find a firearm’s serial number, the firearm was still added to the “ghost gun” list, because the ATF never checked or verified any of the firearms added to the list.
This caused ATF and other agencies to question the validity of its own database, which Mitchem was responsible for creating. However, the Biden Administration used the list strongly to promote its anti-gun efforts.
I’ve described Biden’s ATF as a gun control group with law enforcement powers, so it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Mitchem went to work for Everytown as the group’s Senior Firearms Industry Advisor. And with Everytown pushing blue states to essentially create their own state-level ATFs, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from her in the future.
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