Texas Supplying ATF With Income of Residents for Warrantless Monitoring
Before you flee to Texas you need to read this.
Texas is supposed to be a Second Amendment Sanctuary State.
From The Epoch Times:
Texas secretly gives its citizens’ incomes to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Documents show this has led to at least one person being monitored by the feds without a warrant through the federal gun background check system. The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) told The Epoch Times that it has written contracts with ATF for “sharing income information” for criminal investigations. The revelation may lead to oversight by the legislature.
Texas does not have a state income tax. Employers report wages to the TWC in order to determine their unemployment taxes, so its the state’s only source for tracking income.
Texas’s role in the program was uncovered in the ATF’s ninth production of documents to GOA, (Gun Owners of America), as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The 42 pages are more heavily redacted than the previous ones given to GOA. There are seven pages of blacked-out information before the source of the income of the person in Texas is shown as TWC.
“One would think that a pro-gun state like Texas would not be handing over gun owners’ confidential financial information to the federal government without a warrant or likely even without probable cause,” Rob Olson, an attorney for GOA, told The Epoch Times.
Steady Job, Too Many Guns
Another case in the documents shows agents in the ATF Dallas field office knew a Texas woman’s salary and used that information to get the FBI to put her into NICS. It does not say her salary came from TWC, but there is one paragraph redacted.
The agent wrote in Jan 2021 that the suspect “has a steady job however her annual salary in no way can support her current spending on firearms.” It also says that she “received multiple wire” transfers from a man in Sacramento, California.
It appears the woman was monitored daily by the FBI for at least 180 days. None of the emails between the FBI and ATF released have shown that a request to monitor someone was denied.
The fallacy in this flawed estimation of your earnings is the state may not know all your sources of income. Investments, your own business, an inheritance, your savings, a credit card, for example. Hey, maybe you even won the lottery.
Side note: Do not use your credit card to buy guns! The credit card companies are tracking gun purchases and reporting them! They claim they have stopped, if you believe that.
Unconstitutional and illegal ATF and FBI behavior
In a previous essay, The Disarming of America, I wrote how the ATF was using the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), to unconstitutionally track law abiding Americans who have exercised their right to purchase guns.
34 U.S. Code § 40901 - Establishment
(i)Prohibition relating To establishment of registration systems with respect to firearms No department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States may—
(1) require that any record or portion thereof generated by the system established under this section be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or political subdivision thereof; or
(2) use the system established under this section to establish any system for the registration of firearms, firearm owners, or firearm transactions or dispositions, except with respect to persons, prohibited by section 922(g) or (n) of title 18 or State law, from receiving a firearm.
They are forbidden by Federal law yet are actually monitoring people who buy guns and have not broken any laws.
If they had probable cause, they would be legally required to seek a warrant from a judge. They are just deciding they have some reason to believe a certain person’s exercise of Second Amendment rights needs to be monitored. This sounds strangely familiar…….
Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime - Lavrentiy Beria, the most ruthless and longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Texas Workforce Commissioners are appointed by the governor.
Governor Greg Abbott appoints the three commissioners that govern the TWC. In June 2021, Abbott signed a bill that made Texas a Second Amendment Sanctuary State to resist unconstitutional gun-control policies being pushed by Biden. The law prohibits state officials from enforcing specific federal regulations on firearms that are not in line with state law.
Let's see how long it takes the Governor and State Legislators to correct this violation of the Constitution and Texas law. If you live in Texas, you need to contact them to make sure they hurry.
Furthermore, the bureaucrats involved need fired and logically prosecuted for aiding and abetting the ATF in its crimes.
Abbot is a Uniparty false flag.
Thanks for the heads up, as Texas is on my list of possibles. Building a car top camper, trying to be ready to exit Poortland OR on short notice. All around me folks have their hands on their ears, still chanting La La La......I heard this city is emptying fast, by death or by travel. Pushing us around is also a goal, literally uprooting the survivors phase seems to be in full swing? Even here in the stubbystack the fuckery is thickening, I think they and twatter are actually in cahoots to create echochambers that dead end. Remember ALL THE VALUE of a given platform is based on OUR work, if no one wrote stuff there would be no Substack. They should pay us, but instead we are putting our pennies into their piggybank, to monetize our intellectual property. It's actually quite a rip off for us and quite lucrative for the owners. I am glad to know of the like minded, mission accomplished. Other rows to hoe. best