By: Anthony Morelli
Congress is refusing to be the ATF’s patsy anymore.
Conservative members of Congress are taking strong action against the ATF.
And the agency is on its heels after this major warning over an anti-gun scheme.
Andy Biggs has been one of the most right-wing members of Congress for years, and he is a strong supporter of gun owners and an opponent of the ATF.
Now that his party is in the majority, and he is chairman of a powerful subcommittee in the House, he is making it a top priority to find out exactly what the ATF is up to.
He has sent a letter to the ATF demanding information about what he believes is a surveillance scheme against gun owners.
And he has made it clear that he will not rest until he receives satisfactory information about what is really going on at the ATF.
Now the agency, under the new leadership of Kash Patel, will have to decide if and how they will respond to this letter.
This dangerous scheme clearly will not be able to continue in the shadow of darkness anymore, as Congress is now paying attention.
According to The Truth About Guns, “The ongoing controversy over the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) using facial recognition software to identify gun owners has raised the ire of the head of the U.S. House of Representatives House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance.
“U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, sent a letter to ATF Acting Director Kash Patel on March 27 demanding information about the agency’s use of facial recognition software and artificial intelligence (AI) to ‘identify gun owners.’”
Patel should be friendly to Biggs, as they are on the same side politically, and Democrats have complained that Patel is too conservative to lead the ATF.
But this will certainly put Patel to the test and show if he has the fortitude to stand up for gun owners and the Second Amendment.
The article continues, “According to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, ATF has access to ‘various facial recognition systems including Clearview AI,2 Vigilant Solutions, and other systems owned by other federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial law enforcement agencies’ and ‘conducted at least 549 facial recognition searches on gun owners’ over a two-and-a-half year period.”
“Rep. Biggs and his subcommittee are also concerned that recent reports that ATF has discontinued use of facial recognition software might not be accurate.”
“The Congressman gave Patel and the ATF until April 10 to provide the requested documents.”
Patel should have nothing to fear handing over these documents, as he is not the one who was responsible for the programs and Biggs is not trying to burn him here.
In fact, Patel has a great opportunity to reform the agency so that it respects Americans’ constitutional rights instead of attacking them.
Biggs is surely hoping Patel will do the right thing in response to this letter, and gun owners will be watching to see what happens next.