Sheriff: Residents should tell ATF agents conducting warrantless gun inspections to leave

 

A Washington state sheriff recently advised residents in his county that if agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) come to their homes without a search warrant asking to inspect their firearms, they can tell them to leave their property.

Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer said in a press statement on Friday that agents are “making surprise home visits of persons who have purchased two or more firearms at one time. To my knowledge, these ATF visits have not occurred in Washington State yet.”

Sheriff Songer told The Washington Times he became concerned about the Second Amendment rights of the residents of Klickitat County after viewing a doorbell video that showed a firearms owner who ATF agents coerced, without a warrant, to inspect his firearms.

Sheriff Songer, who is running for reelection to a third term in office, said that if residents are contacted by an ATF agent or any other federal agent lacking a search warrant to inspect firearms they have purchased, residents do not have to cooperate with the authorities and should contact his office if the agents refuse to leave their property.

Sheriff Songer’s press release came out one day after a recent doorbell video recording from a Delaware resident showing ATF agents and a state police trooper asking a legal firearm owner for his weapons’ serial numbers without a warrant.

The video, which the ATF defended as “entirely appropriate,” caused an uproar among Second Amendment advocacy organizations, including Gun Owners of America, which said the U.S. “background check system has turned into a de facto registry, allowing the federal government to check up on who owns what firearms because of the ATF unlawful actions.”...MORE