This idea backfired pretty badly. A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms plan to turn use Valentine’s Day as a hook to get jilted lover...
This idea backfired pretty badly.
A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms plan to turn use Valentine’s Day as a hook to get jilted lovers to snitch on ex-significant others took a turn for the worse on Monday after the agency posted a public plea for information about “illegal gun activity.”
The response could not have been what the feds were looking for.
“Valentine’s Day can still be fun even if you broke up. Do you have information about a former (or current) partner involved in illegal gun activity?” the post asked.
“Let us know, and we will make sure it’s a Valentine’s Day to remember!”
Someone at the ATF probably thought it was pretty clever, as did someone at the Biden Justice Department, who retweeted it. (It might also have been cribbed from a similar Facebook post published Friday by the Nash County, North Carolina, Sheriff’s Office that wasn’t geared specifically toward firearms.)
But a large part of the audience on social media used the opportunity to point out that the ATF hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory in recent years — along with other federal law enforcement agencies that sometimes appear a good deal more interested in casting a cloud of suspicion over law-abiding Americans than making a case against the politically connected.
Like, say, President Joe Biden’s notoriously wayward son, Hunter Biden. According to a report last March in Politico — not exactly a hotbed of conservative journalism — Biden lied on a 2018 form when he was buying a gun to hide his history of drug abuse.
And more than a few noted that the ATF and the Justice Department don’t exactly have clean hands when it comes to illegal weapons itself. The infamous “Fast and Furious” operation run during the Obama administration by then-Attorney General Eric Holder hasn’t been as forgotten as many liberals would like. (And the memory of the late Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.)
And, political hypocrisy aside, it’s important to note that what the ATF is looking for here is supposed evidence of illegal activity deliberately solicited from a segment of the population that would have a reason to lie about it.
Would any responsible government agency solicit — en masse — information to bring the might, and firepower, of the federal government down on any individual unfortunate enough to have a past paramour who wasn’t too picky about how to get revenge?
The answer is obvious, and it’s “no.”
Americans who care about the Second Amendment already have plenty of reasons not to trust the ATF.
Bonehead moves like this Twitter post give them one more.
As one Twitter user put it:
“Bad idea, guys. I went through an acrimonious divorce many years ago,” the user wrote. “Had my now ex-wife thought about setting me up for an armed SWAT-like ATF raid with a bogus gun sale tip, I’m fairly sure she would’ve done it.”
The geniuses at the ATF who came up with this idea better hope not too many take them up on it — and turn armed federal agents into tools of romantic revenge.
Bad as it’s backfired now, it could get a lot worse.
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