Reuben King is an Amish farmer in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He’s got a side hustle selling long guns to the locals. How many? When the ATF raided his barn, they confiscated 615 of them.
Undercover ATF and State Troopers had been buying guns from King from 2019 to 2021. In the middle of all that, the ATF sent King a letter telling him he needed a Federal Firearms License or he had to stop selling guns.
But King doesn’t need an FFL, his attorney, Joshua Prince, told The Epoch Times. He will argue the FFL itself is unconstitutional.
Firearms sellers—those who sell occasionally from a private collection, and those who hold an FFL— have come under more scrutiny since June 2021 when President Joe Biden declared “zero tolerance for rogue gun dealers that willfully violate the law.”
King’s private collection included, according to the ATF,
During the January barn raid at King’s property, the ATF said it recovered ample evidence of an ongoing gun selling business, including 615 guns, many marked with price tags; approximately 10,000 rounds of ammunition; detailed records showing thousands of purchases and sales of guns over many years; receipts for advertisements placed in a local newspaper offering firearms for sale under several names and phone numbers; and plastic bowls containing numerous pre-marked price tags sorted by denominations.
King had approximately 30 brand-new, Savage Axis rifles (26 in the same caliber)—each in an unopened factory box, and all in a larger palleted shipping box—as well as a similar stack of 19 Silver Eagle shotguns (18 in the same gauge), also new in box, court papers say.
Don’t you wish your personnel collection looked like that too? Well, maybe it could. King’s lawyer will be working to make that possible.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said the understanding of the Second Amendment around the time of the founding is the best measure of what the founders intended.
“You will not find any laws in existence around the time of the founding that required an individual to obtain a license to be able to sell firearms,” Prince said. “It wasn’t until 1938 that the first Federal Firearms Act, requiring sellers of firearms to become licensed, was enacted.” That was 147 years later.
When you’re right, you are right. The right to keep and bear arms say nothing about how or how many. And it has long been understood that in almost any society, you are free to trade, gift, or sell your property. So, what if that property consists of several hundred rifles?
Is that a line you won’t cross?
The weenie progressives are wetting themselves at the thought of seeing a truck back up in their neighbor’s driveway to drop off a pallet of rifles. I’d pay to see a picture of that. But given the new SCOTUS benchmark for gun laws, restrictions, rules, and provisos, the Amish Farmer may be on to something.
If the case finds its way to the highest court, the ATF might find itself with a lot more free time on its hands, which, maybe, they could spend learning how not to shoot people’s dogs or – since it’s trendy – helping the FBI find unhinged military aged American Yutes who claim to be transgender.
HT | ET
