16 ATF agents scared off gun store inspection by Congress members

[WobblyPossum]

@JRB, I had a more detailed response typed up but then my device took a dump before I could submit the post. In the meantime TGS posted good information that addresses some of your questions. I will say that, at least on the fed side where I work in an office that has more than 15-16 agents, it’s actually pretty easy for me to get that many bodies if that’s how many I need. Whether it’s for an enforcement action accompanied by a search or arrest warrant, or just for surveillance where no enforcement action will be taken, if I tell my supervisor that I need practically everyone in the office and I do so a decent amount of time in advance, there wouldn’t be a problem getting that many people to participate. My formal job title is Criminal Investigator, though. Almost everything I deal with has criminal penalties associated with it outside of a couple of administrative areas of law and even one of those involves taking people into custody.

If whoever was in charge of auditing this business requested 14 additional people far enough in advance, it would have probably been approved without any issues. The federal agencies generally throw bodies at a problem and the ones with decent budgets don’t hesitate to pay to bring personnel from other areas if they have to. Things I would have been fine doing as a patrol officer with one or two additional officers and maybe my supervisor’s knowledge, I now need at least a dozen people and an op plan blessed by my supervisor’s supervisor and the team leader of our area Special Response Team.

The ATF, under the current administration, has been very strict regarding mistakes by FFLs and has revoked a large amount of licenses for things that wouldn’t have led to a revocation previously. If the people at this FFL thought their license was in jeopardy, I can see them calling their representatives in Congress, hoping the Congresspeople would scare the ATF away.

[whomever]

I'm curious how many folks usually go on, say, an OSHA inspection?

When I worked in a restaurant, the Health Inspector traveled alone. The fire inspector was alone if he came in a car; you only had a crowd of firemen if they brought the truck, and I'm guessing that was just in case they needed to go to straight to a fire. We had an IRS guy for a neighbor, and as far as I know if he audited a business he did it alone.

My father was a 'Compliance Officer' for the Department of Labor. He spent his days going to businesses to inspect their payroll records and interview employees to look for violations of the wage and hour laws. He was an army of one :-), They didn't send more than one guy even for businesses with hundreds of employees. Off the top, it seems like the same kind of thing - review the records and talk to people to make sure everything is on the up and up. What makes checking an FFL 16 times more labor intensive?

[HCM]

And why, if it was a legitimate inspection, training or whatever, would these agents be deterred in the slightest by the presence of some politicians? Wouldn’t the agents have simply said “Step aside and allow us to do our rightful and proper inspection job”. ?????

Let me rephrase this in the simplest possible terms:

Because they’re not f***ing “agents.”

Words mean things. The titles “Agent” and “Inspector” are not interchangeable.

ATF Inspectors are the ATF equivalent of the health inspectors inspecting the kitchen of your favorite restaurant.

If you want a business license to operate a Restaurant, you agree to allow health inspections of your restaurant kitchen as a condition of having such a business license.

When you get an FFL, you agree to inspection of your business premises and business records by ATF Inspectors as a condition of being a federally licensed dealer.

If the health inspectors in your favorite restaurant, find a dead body or a couple kilos of cocaine in the walk-in freezer, they’re going to call your city police department. While both the health inspectors and the local cops work for the city, that doesn’t mean the health inspectors are cops.

[HCM]

@JRB, I had a more detailed response typed up but then my device took a dump before I could submit the post. In the meantime TGS posted good information that addresses some of your questions. I will say that, at least on the fed side where I work in an office that has more than 15-16 agents, it’s actually pretty easy for me to get that many bodies if that’s how many I need. Whether it’s for an enforcement action accompanied by a search or arrest warrant, or just for surveillance where no enforcement action will be taken, if I tell my supervisor that I need practically everyone in the office and I do so a decent amount of time in advance, there wouldn’t be a problem getting that many people to participate. My formal job title is Criminal Investigator, though. Almost everything I deal with has criminal penalties associated with it outside of a couple of administrative areas of law and even one of those involves taking people into custody.

If whoever was in charge of auditing this business requested 14 additional people far enough in advance, it would have probably been approved without any issues. The federal agencies generally throw bodies at a problem and the ones with decent budgets don’t hesitate to pay to bring personnel from other areas if they have to. Things I would have been fine doing as a patrol officer with one or two additional officers and maybe my supervisor’s knowledge, I now need at least a dozen people and an op plan blessed by my supervisor’s supervisor and the team leader of our area Special Response Team.

The ATF, under the current administration, has been very strict regarding mistakes by FFLs and has revoked a large amount of licenses for things that wouldn’t have led to a revocation previously. If the people at this FFL thought their license was in jeopardy, I can see them calling their representatives in Congress, hoping the Congresspeople would scare the ATF away.

ATF does not normally require FFL‘s to shut down their business during an inspection , however, one Atf is conducting an inspection, it disrupts the business, and whether reasonable or not it scares off some customers. The last time, my LGS was inspected. There were several customers who saw the inspectors asked who they were, and turned around and left as soon as they heard the letters ATF. At the time they were a medium sized FFL, and they had a team of four doing their inspection.

For one of the biggest and busiest FFL in a large market like Atlanta having more people means you can do the audit quicker and minimize disruption. A four person team who spends four days doing an audit or a 16 person team that does a one day audit are both doing 16 man days worth of work but one is less disruptive of the business.

[JRB]

@JRB, I had a more detailed response typed up but then my device took a dump before I could submit the post. In the meantime TGS posted good information that addresses some of your questions. I will say that, at least on the fed side where I work in an office that has more than 15-16 agents, it’s actually pretty easy for me to get that many bodies if that’s how many I need. Whether it’s for an enforcement action accompanied by a search or arrest warrant, or just for surveillance where no enforcement action will be taken, if I tell my supervisor that I need practically everyone in the office and I do so a decent amount of time in advance, there wouldn’t be a problem getting that many people to participate. My formal job title is Criminal Investigator, though. Almost everything I deal with has criminal penalties associated with it outside of a couple of administrative areas of law and even one of those involves taking people into custody.

If whoever was in charge of auditing this business requested 14 additional people far enough in advance, it would have probably been approved without any issues. The federal agencies generally throw bodies at a problem and the ones with decent budgets don’t hesitate to pay to bring personnel from other areas if they have to. Things I would have been fine doing as a patrol officer with one or two additional officers and maybe my supervisor’s knowledge, I now need at least a dozen people and an op plan blessed by my supervisor’s supervisor and the team leader of our area Special Response Team.

The ATF, under the current administration, has been very strict regarding mistakes by FFLs and has revoked a large amount of licenses for things that wouldn’t have led to a revocation previously. If the people at this FFL thought their license was in jeopardy, I can see them calling their representatives in Congress, hoping the Congresspeople would scare the ATF away.

Thank you for the detailed response - as a layman, I assumed it'd take a warrant or something more significant to justify that many personnel at one place, especially for what's supposedly a routine thing. Thanks for taking the time to explain that and improve my understanding!

As to the FFL revocation issues; are they no longer offering any grace period to straighten things out? I've heard of big box 01FFL's getting as much as 30 days to clean up bound books/hunt down paperwork for a re-inspection.
I know that FFL's known for repeatedly having issues often get suspended/revoked immediately. Obviously, the higher the volume the easier it is to make mistakes, but from other posts it sounds like this place had a pretty solid operation.

I suppose that's the other detail missing - if this were the hail-mary final chance to keep their FFL, and they needed more time to triple-check all their records to ensure 100% compliance, that would explain calling in favors from Congresspeople. But it still doesn't explain that many ATF personnel, at least based on my understanding and experience.

ATF does not normally require FFL‘s to shut down their business during an inspection , however, one Atf is conducting an inspection, it disrupts the business, and whether reasonable or not it scares off some customers. The last time, my LGS was inspected. There were several customers who saw the inspectors asked who they were, and turned around and left as soon as they heard the letters ATF. At the time they were a medium sized FFL, and they had a team of four doing their inspection.

For one of the biggest and busiest FFL in a large market like Atlanta having more people means you can do the audit quicker and minimize disruption. A four person team who spends four days doing an audit or a 16 person team that does a one day audit are both doing 16 man days worth of work but one is less disruptive of the business.

Honestly, it's less disruptive and usually more organized to have fewer personnel, especially since most of what they need to do is usually done in a back office with the paperwork, bound book, vaults, etc. To @WobblyPossum 's point about Fed LE orgs changing SOP's to just use tons of people on stuff like this - they really need to consider the optics, especially the ATF.
As an 01FFL playing by the rules, the ATF have a very necessary role. But with their higher leadership mucking around with things like the pistol brace mess, the ATF doesn't need to throw any new eggs on their own faces if the same goal can be accomplished effectively and safely with fewer personnel.

[WobblyPossum]

As to the FFL revocation issues; are they no longer offering any grace period to straighten things out? I've heard of big box 01FFL's getting as much as 30 days to clean up bound books/hunt down paperwork for a re-inspection.
I know that FFL's known for repeatedly having issues often get suspended/revoked immediately. Obviously, the higher the volume the easier it is to make mistakes, but from other posts it sounds like this place had a pretty solid operation.

Here’s the most recent article I read. It’s from Gun Owners of America. Supposedly it’s “zero tolerance” these days and almost every mistake is treated as if it’s done willfully.

[TGS]

I'm curious how many folks usually go on, say, an OSHA inspection?

My ex wife is an OSHA inspector; formerly an industrial hygienist doing the chem/bio side of things, now just a regular safety inspector because she likes it more. As an industrial hygienist they routinely went out as a pair for more complex monitoring operations, and they'll go out as pairs now in her safety role just if it's a big site that's going to take a lot of time on. But, yeah, it's usually just one as you noted.

No idea why they'd bring 16. Like @JRB said, we are obviously not getting the whole picture. Like my comments in many threads, I'll ask: what is the verifiable information that gives us a reason to be outraged? In what way has the ATF violated anyone's rights? Or is everyone getting outraged for really no reason? What is the reason that this thread is several pages long, and is that reason just that everyone is really just a dumbass with almost zero knowledge on how the government works, the basis of legal authorities involved, or ability to read and absorb the most basic of information?

So, all we really have here is that the ATF did something. It appears that something is within their legal authorities and that no rights have been violated. But we're mad...because by gollyz the ATF did something! *Shakes fist*

[HCM]

Thank you for the detailed response - as a layman, I assumed it'd take a warrant or something more significant to justify that many personnel at one place, especially for what's supposedly a routine thing. Thanks for taking the time to explain that and improve my understanding!

As to the FFL revocation issues; are they no longer offering any grace period to straighten things out? I've heard of big box 01FFL's getting as much as 30 days to clean up bound books/hunt down paperwork for a re-inspection.
I know that FFL's known for repeatedly having issues often get suspended/revoked immediately. Obviously, the higher the volume the easier it is to make mistakes, but from other posts it sounds like this place had a pretty solid operation.

I suppose that's the other detail missing - if this were the hail-mary final chance to keep their FFL, and they needed more time to triple-check all their records to ensure 100% compliance, that would explain calling in favors from Congresspeople. But it still doesn't explain that many ATF personnel, at least based on my understanding and experience.



Honestly, it's less disruptive and usually more organized to have fewer personnel, especially since most of what they need to do is usually done in a back office with the paperwork, bound book, vaults, etc. To @WobblyPossum 's point about Fed LE orgs changing SOP's to just use tons of people on stuff like this - they really need to consider the optics, especially the ATF.
As an 01FFL playing by the rules, the ATF have a very necessary role. But with their higher leadership mucking around with things like the pistol brace mess, the ATF doesn't need to throw any new eggs on their own faces if the same goal can be accomplished effectively and safely with fewer personnel.

Wobbly possum is correct about Atf’s inspections being “zero tolerance” at the direction of the current administration, however, there are still steps between having issues and revocation of an FFL.

There’s an FFL in my city, which has been in business for decades, and was doing well until the current generation (the grandson) took over. They’ve had multiple issues involving straw purchases, answering 4473 questions for customers, ITAR violations (involving things sent to Mexico), and in one case, a refusal to cooperate with the county sheriffs office in a homicide investigation. As a result this particular FFL is currently on some form of FFL “probation” (probably not the actual term, but an apt description) and is using an outside consultant to get them back into compliance.

With bigger stores, even if the ownership is legitimate, they have to watch their employees. One large FFL I’m familiar with has had to fire employees for knowing facilitating straw purchases and advising suspected straw purchasers to structure purchases to avoid the multiple handgun sales form. They fired another employee for attempting to steal a suppressor. The employee wasn’t prosecuted because it never made it out of the store but it was a clear attempt at theft.

[Joe in PNG]

Does anyone have a link to an actual trustworthy version of the story?

[joshs]

Does anyone have a link to an actual trustworthy version of the story?

This local news story is the best I've found so far: https://www.11alive.com/article/news...7-ca8cb1a4f47e

They also got a quote from ATF confirming that it is a compliance inspection and that they used a large team due to the size/complexity of the inspection. The timing still seems strange given DeSantis's planned visit to the store tomorrow.