“We operated in the idea that we’re not in the business of putting people out of business,” said Earl Kleckley, a former director of industry operations in the A.T.F.’s Los Angeles field office. “We have put people out of business, but that was a situation where these business entities had more than one bite of the apple and continued to operate in a violative fashion.”
Added Mr. Wolfe: “We used to kind of bend over backwards.”
One A.T.F. official cited the political environment when asked why the bureau overrules inspectors’ delicensing recommendations. The official cited the 2007 nomination of Michael Sullivan, then the acting director, to be permanent head of the A.T.F. Republican senators held up[1] the nomination over allegations from constituents, including Red’s Trading Post, that the A.T.F. was too aggressive in its oversight.
The National Rifle Association, the gun industry’s powerful lobbying arm, did not respond to a request for comment.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has pushed prosecutors to more aggressively enforce federal gun laws as part of the Trump administration’s push to reduce violent crime. But prosecutors have focused on gun users[2], not sellers.
The inspection process is further complicated by laws that govern record-keeping in the gun industry, which forbid the A.T.F. to keep records electronically.
“There’s a huge fear in the firearms community of firearms registration,” said Mr. Wolfe, citing an argument from gun rights advocates that the Second Amendment prohibits the government from maintaining any registry of gun owners. Inspections, he said, sometimes require combing through moldy stacks of papers, or records so old they are unreadable.
The A.T.F. has historically struggled[3] to meet its goal of inspecting each licensed firearms dealer once every three to five years. The United States had more than
