Obama White House forcing new gun buyers to declare race, ethnicity - Washington Times Obama administration forcing new gun buyers to declare race, ethnicity ATF policy irks dealers, risks privacy intrusion, racial profiling: critics By Kelly Riddell - The Washington Times - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 The Obama administration quietly has been forcing new gun buyers to declare their race and ethnicity, a policy change that critics say provides little law enforcement value while creating the risk of privacy intrusions and racial profiling. With little fanfare, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2012 amended its Form 4473 — the transactional record the government requires gun purchasers and sellers to fill out when buying a firearm — to identify buyers as either Hispanic, Latino or not. Then a buyer must check his or her race: Indian, Asian, black, Pacific Islander or white. The amendment is causing a headache for gun retailers, as each box needs to be checked off or else it's an ATF violation — severe enough for the government to shut a business down. Many times people skip over the Hispanic/Latino box and only check their race, or vice versa — both of which are federal errors that can be held against the dealer. Requiring the race and ethnic information of gun buyers is not required by federal law and provides little law enforcement value, legal experts say. And gun industry officials worry about how the information is being used and whether it constitutes an unnecessary intrusion on privacy. "This issue concerns me deeply because, first, it's offensive, and, secondly, there's no need for it," said Evan Nappen, a private practice firearms lawyer in New Jersey. "If there's no need for an amendment, then there's usually a political reason for the change. What this indicates is it was done for political reasons, not law enforcement reasons." ATF said the change came about because it needed to update its forms to comply with an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reporting standard put into effect during the Clinton administration. The ATF declined to comment on why race and ethnicity information are needed in the first place or what they are used for. On its prior 4473 forms, the bureau had been collecting race data. "OMB's race and ethnicity standards require agencies to ask both race and ethnicity in a specific manner (as done on [Form 4473]), and agencies may not ask for one without asking for the other," wrote Elizabeth Gosselin, a spokeswoman for the ATF, in an emailed response to The Washington Times. She did not say why the agency suddenly made the change in response to a rule that was more than a decade old. For ATF to ask for a purchaser's race and ethnicity is not specifically authorized under federal statute, and since a government-issued photo ID — like a driver's license — and a background check are already required by law to purchase a gun, the ethnicity/race boxes aren't there for identification reasons, Mr. Nappen said. "There is nothing [in ATF or OMB's website links addressing the change in policy] that supports the requirement that ATF collect race-based information. The OMB guidance merely describes what categories of race should look like if information is collected," Laura Murphy, the American Civil Liberties Union director for legislative affairs in Washington, said in an emailed statement. In addition, Mrs. Murphy notes, the OMB guidance was supposed to be implemented by 2003; there's no information given why ATF decided to make this change almost a decade later, she said. "If there is a civil rights enforcement reason for the ATF to collect this data, I have not heard that explanation from ATF or any other federal agency," said Mrs. Murphy. Both the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza — the nation's largest national Hispanic civil rights group — declined comment. Access to the form The 4473 form is supposed to be kept in a gun retailer's possession at all times — allowing ATF agents to inspect the form only during the course of a criminal investigation or during a random audit of the dealer. The form is to be kept out of the hands of the government, hence the distinction between "sales/transaction form" and "registration form." But that isn't always the case, gun rights advocates say. "We've been contacted by several dealers saying ATF is or has been making wholesale copies of their 4473 forms, and it's just not legal," said Erich Pratt, spokesman for Gun Owners of America, a gun advocacy group. "If this is what they're doing somewhat out in the open, what's going on behind closed doors? Are these names and demographic information getting phoned [in and] punched into a government computer? Do they ever come out?" During the time ATF revised its 4473 form to include Hispanic or Latino as an ethnicity, the Obama administration was building gun control cases by saying U.S. firearms dealers were supplying Mexican gangs with weapons and that violence related to the sales was seeping across the border. In March 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Mexico City and gave a speech against American gun stores and owners — blaming them for the drug cartels' violence. Mrs. Clinton subsequently told CBS News that "90 percent" of the "guns that are used by the drug cartels against the police and military" actually "come from America." About a week later, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. made the same points at a gun trafficking conference outside of Mexico City. In April, the president himself flew down to Mexico to inform President Felipe Calderon that Mr. Holder was going to review U.S. law enforcement operations, according to a 2011 report by the American Thinker. This political worldview may have fueled decision-making at ATF, Mr. Nappen suggests. Around the same time that ATF started specifying "Latino/Hispanic" on their U.S. purchasing forms, they also required border firearms dealers in Texas, Arizona, California and New Mexico to start reporting multiple rifle sales. In 2012, when ATF made the Form 4473 modification, they insisted their new reporting requirement for multiple rifle sales in those border states had led to "follow-up investigations involving transactions that might indicate firearms trafficking activities." "Was it coincidental [that] about the time the form changed the requirements came in that border states had to report multiple rifle sales, and there was a push in the antigun movement to claim American guns were arming Mexican cartels south of the border?" asked Mr. Nappen. Although gun advocates speculate on the reasoning behind changing the form, on one thing they are clear: Requiring ethnicity and race to purchase a gun is a clear government overstep, violating Second Amendment rights. "It's an overreach, not authorized by Congress, taken upon [by ATF] unilaterally," said Mr. Pratt. "The president has said his biggest frustration has been not getting gun control enacted — but we can see he's been very active with his phone and his pen. And this certainly — either intentionally or unintentionally — feeds that notion."
I may be wrong, but I think those questions were on the form before nObama took office. I know when I was working at a local gun store the forms went through a revision, but I think that was prior to nObama. Regardless, here in TN, that info was not recorded on the TICS submission didn't ask/record that, so if they only place this info is located on is a piece of paper at the firearms dealers office, what good is it?
Yes, you are correct and it states that in the article. However, what is different is that now the ATF are mandating they be filled in. To what purpose does it serve? Seemed like all the dot gov forms I see you have the option of filling in race. I guess I'm just not the trusting soul when it comes to the ATF--I just think there must be an ulterior motive. I thought the dot gov didn't think there were differences between the races anyway, so, why collect it?
That is an interesting question. Why would it matter if all men are created equal? The article seems to point to the Mexicans or maybe just a cover-up for Fast & Furious. Shoot, why would a Mexican buy a gun if the gov. is giving them away?
Declaring that one is a United States citizen should be all that's needed in the ethnicity text box. I'm surprised that the law doesn't require one's religious affiliation on the documentation as well. Personally...as far as racial identification is concerned...I'd be happy to identify myself on the form as Homo Sapiens...membership of the human race the only relevant fact...though perhaps there are some other primate gun users too.
On the form 4473 if you look at 10a and 10b I have checked the second box under 10a and left 10b blank twice and it went through both times. Did the salesman put it in? I don't know. My wife has her CHL, I don't. I do prefer to buy/trade face to face when I can.
According to the article, if not filled in NOW, the BATFE will come down hard on the store, thus, forcing them to force you to fill it in.
I called ATF, and asked that specific Question.... I was told that if the Boxes are left Blank, the form is NOT complete, and therefore can NOT be used to document a Transaction, so no Transfer can take place.... Time to write my CongressCritters, and get them asking SPECIFIC Questions, to the New ATF Boss..... and I just completed TWO Sales, to Resident Aliens (Mexicans) with Green Cards.... Both were Delayed, and I got a callback within 24 hours, with Approved.....
I'm not surprised in the least. The origins and expansion of gun control in the US are steeped in liberal fears of minorities having guns. Here is an excerpt from Zombie at pjmedia on the subject (full article here): GUN CONTROL Progressive position: Restrict access to guns as much as possible; ultimately ban and confiscate them all. False public rationale offered by progressives to justify their position: Gun violence is a scourge on society; easy access to killing machines unnecessarily facilitates murder and crime. Conservatives’ inaccurate theory of progressives’ real intent: Progressives want to disarm the populace to prevent armed resistance to the eventual imposition of a leftist totalitarian police state. The actual racist origins of the progressive stance: White urban liberals are deathly afraid of black gangbangers with guns, but are ashamed to admit this publicly, so to mask their racist fears they try to ban guns for everyone, as a way of warding off the perception that their real goal is to target blacks specifically. The basic dividing line in American politics is not (as it once was ) North vs. South, nor is it (as many people now assume) Coasts vs. Flyover Country, but rather Urban vs. Rural: The new political divide is a stark division between cities and what remains of the countryside. Not just some cities and some rural areas, either — virtually every major city (100,000-plus population) in the United States of America has a different outlook from the less populous areas that are closest to it. The difference is no longer about where people live, it’s about how people live: in spread-out, open, low-density privacy — or amid rough-and-tumble, in-your-face population density and diverse communities that enforce a lower-common denominator of tolerance among inhabitants. …The only major cities that voted Republican in the 2012 presidential election were Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, and Salt Lake City. Or put more simply: In modern America, liberals live in cities; conservatives live in rural areas. And what else is concentrated in cities? African-Americans, and gun violence: The 62 center cities of America’s 50 largest metro areas account for 15 percent of the population but 39 percent of gun-related murders. Putting all these statistics together, we see that large cities have high concentrations of white liberals alongside gun-using black criminals. And yet it is specifically in Democrat-voting big cities where most of the gun-control measures are proposed. Why is that? Are the white progressive urban dwellers afraid of rootin’-tootin’ cowboys? Of backwoods deer hunters? Of hillbillies with shotguns? No: the average white progressive has never even met a cowboy, a hunter or a hillbilly. And frankly, progressives couldn’t care less if rednecks own guns, because progressives aren’t physically afraid of rednecks on a daily basis. Instead, they are afraid of gun violence at the hands of their fellow city-dwellers, the urban African-Americans who commit a wildly disproportionate percentage of the gun crimes in America. Progressives don’t want to ban guns to disarm resistance to any upcoming police state; that idea has never even occurred to them. Instead, progressives want to ban guns because progressives are afraid of black people. But God forbid that progressives’ racist motivations be exposed publicly. So to make the gun-control bans appear even-handed and race-neutral, progressives must try to ban guns for everyone, even though the bans are in reality aimed at one specific group. Rural gun-users are just collateral damage of a policy that actually targets inner-city blacks.
Bill introduced to bar Race, and Ethnicity questions, when purchasing a fireArm.... New Legislation Prohibits Fed From Requiring Race Be Disclosed When Buying Firearms