Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Washington, D.C. – -(AmmoLand.com)- Many Second Amendment supporters haven’t heard of the Biden Administration’s proposal to greatly widen IRS reporting requirements regarding bank accounts. In essence, if you have more than $600 in your account, or you make more than $600 in transactions in a year, the bank has to report the transactions to the IRS. That’s just about everybody.
This is one of the most dangerous below-the-radar threats to the Second Amendment we’ve seen. For starters, this adds a massive reporting requirement for banks and financial institutions. Just what sort of Second Amendment-related financial activities will get reported? Here’s a short list:
Congratulations, the IRS can start drawing up a list of gun owners, all thanks to the transaction data they force banks to hand over. What could possibly go wrong?
Remember Lois Lerner? While she was perhaps the public face of the Internal Revenue Service’s abuse of power against the Tea Party in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, it was not the only abuse during the Obama Administration. Her retirement, and the fact she draws a six-figure pension with your tax dollars after she quarterbacked the suppression of the use of protected First Amendment rights, is something that should be very concerning.
The IRS used donor lists to steer audits while Obama was in the Oval Office. But that isn’t all. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, whose disdain for the Second Amendment is exceeded by his disdain for the First Amendment, sought to have the IRS and Justice Department cook up charges against the Tea Party. What might he ask for if he can access your contributions to pro-Second Amendment groups? Can you imagine what could be done by someone like Letitia James?
It isn’t just politicians like Sheldon Whitehouse and Letitia James we’d have to fear. Think about David Chipman, likely to become Biden’s “gun czar,” whose nomination as BATFE director Second Amendment supporters rightly opposed, and were successful in defeating. IRS data is supposed to be confidential, but after the leak to ProPublica, and the multiple leaks of Trump’s tax returns, can we really trust that Chipman won’t be able to nose around IRS data?
One thing that Second Amendment supporters need to make fellow Americans understand is that this concern is not paranoia. That is a task that is made difficult by the media, which has often painted Second Amendment supporters as being crazy, or have gone along with those who have libeled us as being child-killing domestic terrorists for opposing efforts to punish us for horrific crimes and acts of madness we did not commit.
Second Amendment supporters need to contact their Representative and Senators and politely urge them to oppose this IRS power grab that will be abused to attack our Second Amendment rights, and to instead support the Freedom Financing Act. They also need to support pro-Second Amendment groups so that anti-Second Amendment extremists can be defeated via the ballot bot at the federal, state, and local levels as soon as possible.
About Harold Hutchison
Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.