ATF Agents Showing Up At Homes of Unfinished 80% Gun Frame Dealers
ATF Agents Showing Up At Homes of Unfinished 80% Gun Frame Dealers, Don’t Let Them In
BY JOHN CRUMP
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
BALTIMORE, MD –-(Ammoland.com)-The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Agents from the Baltimore Field Office have been visiting the homes of buyers of large quantities of Polymer80 frames and kits.
Five special agents and Detective EE Schwartz of the Anne Arundel County Police Department showed up at the door of one of the co-owners of 2A Builds. 2A Builds is a company that sells unfinished 80% kits at gun shows in the mid-Atlantic region of the country. They recently purchased 65 frames from U.S. Patriot Armory.
The agents wanted to search the owner’s house, and the owner agreed because he had nothing illegal. The agents didn’t find anything against the law in the home but did want to take the owner’s legally owned firearms. The owner refused then the agents said they were just going to take a finished P80, a single kit, and two MCK stabilizers. The company’s owner once again refused the request and asked the law enforcement officials to leave his home.
The ATF agents said they would wait there until they could secure a search warrant if the owner refused to turn over the items. The owner started to call an attorney, at which point the officials said they decided not to seek a warrant that day but would in the future and then left. The only contact they left him was Detective EE Schwartz’s business card (badge: 1665) of the Anne Arundel County Police Department. Before they left, the agents took pictures of all the firearms and serial numbers to run checks.
AmmoLand News has learned of two other visits by ATF agents to dealers’ homes that sell unfinished frames. Although in their case, they told the ATF agents to leave if they did not have a search warrant. The agents threatened to wait there until a judge issued a search warrant but once again left without executing a search of the properties. Both dealers purchased items from U.S. Patriot Armory.
AmmoLand discovered that U.S. Patriot Armory did not turn over any customer information to the ATF or other law enforcement agencies through our sources. It isn’t clear how the ATF received information about the customers, although everyone visited paid for the unfinished frames via credit card, and U.S. Patriot Armory uses Authorize.net.
Authorize.net is one of the only payment processing companies that will process firearm sales. Almost every other payment processor blocks the sale of firearms and unfinished frames. Although we have no evidence that says Authorize.net turned over customer information in this case, the company did turn over data of customers that purchased kits from other companies in the past.
AmmoLand News reached out to the ATF for comment on the ongoing visit. Public Information Officer Amanda Hill said the ATF cannot confirm or deny the existence of an investigation and will not be providing any further comment.
Anti-gun politicians have made a significant push to ban unfinished frames and receivers at the behest of anti-gun groups such Giffords, Everytown, and Brady. The groups call these items the fake and misleading “Ghost Guns.” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has made it his crusade for these non-guns to be banned. New Jersey has been suing sellers of unfinished frames, and California has sued the ATF for not considering these frames to be firearms.
Detective EE Schwartz did not return AmmoLand News’s call for comment.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
