Here is Senator Bob Casey's letter to a constituent who warned Casey about the ATF's back door attacks on the Second Amendment. The Senators response was essentially to provide MORE funding and INCREASE the ATF's powers.

Senator, If I am reading this wrong then please correct me. However you cannot say that you support the Second Amendment and support the ATF; with there track record. I hope that Pennsylvanian Gun Owners will remember that in the next election.

From: "Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr." senator@casey.senate.gov Date: October 26, 2007 5:52:35 PM EDT Subject: Response from Senator Casey Dear Mr. (Removed): Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding the Second Amendment. I appreciate hearing from all Pennsylvanians about the issues that matter most to them. As you may know, I support the Second Amendment and will continue to uphold the rights of law-abiding citizens to own firearms. I also believe we must fully enforce local gun laws and help local governments put more law enforcement officers on the street. Agencies such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms do not have the resources to enforce current gun laws. I will fight to give law enforcement more resources to find criminals with guns, to find gun dealers who violate existing laws, and to increase gun law prosecutions. To that end, I am a co-sponsor of the COPS Improvement Act of 2007, which would increase funding to put more law enforcement officers on the streets. I have also heard from many constituents in regards to the tragedy at Virginia Tech. The tragedy at Virginia Tech leaves me beyond sadness. My thoughts and prayers go out to the students and families that lost loved ones. Pennsylvania has been greatly affected due to the large number of Pennsylvanians enrolled there. Schools should be a place of calm and safety. There will and there should be a discussion of what we can do to prevent another tragedy. I appreciate your insight and perspective on this important issue facing our nation. Please be assured that I have taken your views into account. If you have access to the Internet, I encourage you to frequently visit my web site, http://casey.senate.gov. In the months ahead, I will continue to develop the site in order to allow you to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington. Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you. Sincerely, Bob Casey United States Senator

If anyone else has received a response from their Senators regarding the ATF then please be sure to pass it along. I found this letter listed online that was written to Representative Stupack of Michigan and I appreciate everyone getting the word out.

The NRA-ILA Grass Roots Division has issued a statement concerning the ATF's attack on the firearms industry. I was pleased to see the following: Others in the pro-gun grassroots community have reported on this issue, including Ryan Horsley of Red's Trading Post, and numerous other bloggers. Working together, it is our hope that we can continue our mutual efforts to reform BATFE once and for all to reduce and eliminate unjust harassment of legitimate gun dealers. So I want to further encourage all of you that you are making a difference, my blog started out just to give some insight into what a firearms dealer endures in this process, hopefully I pray that changes will be made and other dealers will not have to go through this.

The plight of Red's Trading Post (under relentless assault from the BATFE, despite being "guilty" of nothing worse than occasional, trivial clerical errors), and many other gun dealers suffering the same fate (but few fighting back as courageously) may mean more to gun owners than simply the inconvenience of finding a gun shop nearby when so many are being forced to close. It certainly should mean something to any gun owner who believes that "registration leads to confiscation" (which has proved true far too often to be ignored).

As Ryan Horsley (who managaes Red's, and whose family opened it more than seventy years ago), points out, nearly 80% of the FFL holders in this country were closed in the period from 1994 to 2005.

What does that have to do with gun registration? The BATFE Form 4473 that must be filled out for every gun purchase from a licensed dealer must be kept on file (for twenty years) by the dealer. The dealer must also record all the information from every Form 4473 in his "bound book." This book must be kept for the entire time the dealer is in business (in other words, there is no twenty-year "shelf life" for this information). No government agency may keep the 4473's, or even copies of them–this is what is intended to protect gun owners from a gun registry (the BATFE can of course inspect the forms as part of an investigation, but cannot demand them en masse).

However, once a dealer closes, for any reason, he must surrender his "bound book" to the BATFE, giving them the records of every sale made by that dealer. That, obviously, is just the information that prohibition against a gun registry was intended to keep out of the government's grasping claws.

So, from 1994 to 2005, that's almost 200,000 bound books, and untold millions of transactions, that the BATFE stormtroopers have gotten their hands on. That in itself might be much of the motivation behind the BATFE's jihad against gun dealers.

Still think it's not really your problem when the BATFE goes after a gun shop?

I checked my e-mail and received a post from my friend Bruce at Massbackwards. Not only was is holding a sign exposing our Faux Second Amendment Presidential candidate Mitt Romney at an appearance in New Hampshire but he is also wearing a Red's Trading Post cap (which we sold out of and I am still waiting for the new colors).

Mitt might find that a bit extreme. Here is his post and I hope someone finds the video that was taken.

Todays World Net Daily story reports that:

An ATF inspector, Herbert Blount, told Savage that when the agency moved to a new building, officials "lost/misplaced" records for more than 500 businesses and replacements were being sought.

Somehow my .4% error rate doesn't seem so bad, however the which was questioned about it's own record keeping before now seems WILLFUL. I wonder if they finally find those lost records if they will be in PERFECT ALPHABETICAL order as they cited us for.

Well I just got my letter from my good buddy Mitt Romney, about his stance on the ATF's Back Door attack on the Second Amendment. I got my form letter but I was particularly concerned with what he defines as "extreme weapons, those which were not meant for hunting, sport, or self-defense, have no business being on the streets." I think Mitt may have beat Josh Sugarman to the punch on his coining of a new phrase to demonize certain weapons. I wonder if you can take extreme weapons hunting?

Dear Ryan:

Thank you for contacting me about the important issue of gun ownership and the right to keep and bear arms. I appreciate your interest in my campaign for President and would like to extend my sincere gratitude for taking the time to share your views with me.

I strongly support the Second Amendment right of Americans to keep and bear arms. I am proud to be among the many decent, law-abiding men and women who safely use firearms.

I firmly believe in the importance of responsible gun ownership and sales. As a member of the National Rifle Association, I do not believe that we need any more federal gun control laws. I also recognize that some types of extreme weapons, those which were not meant for hunting, sport, or self-defense, have no business being on the streets.

An individual’s right to keep and bear arms is a freedom guaranteed to all Americans by the United States Constitution. Together, we must ensure this freedom is protected. As Governor of one of the most liberal states in the country, I stood up for the rights of gun owners and sportsmen over burdensome bureaucratic regulation. I look forward to upholding these same ideals in Washington, D.C.

I am running for President because I fervently believe that I have the experience and vision to address the issues facing our country. Throughout my years in both the private and public sectors, I have been successful by pursuing innovation and transformation. If there ever was a time when innovation and transformation were needed in government, it is now.

Again, thank you for contacting me. Please feel free to visit my website at www.MittRomney.com for updated information on 2^nd Amendment rights and other issues that may be of interest to you. I look forward to hearing from you in the future, and earning your support.

Sincerely,

I just happened to receive the Appropriations Bill for 2008 which was passed by the House of Representatives. Take a look at the page titled 63: The Committee has heard reports that ATF has pursued violation revocations and denials against firearms dealers based on violations that consist largely of record keeping errors of various types that are unlikely to impede tracing investigations or prosecution of individuals who use firearms in crime. The Committee encourages ATF to consider lesser gradation of sanctions for record keeping errors. That sounds great but this is an agency that answers to no one! They were told to correct this problem in the 2004 OIG report but it is several years later with several less dealers. So under the ATF's own definition this disobedience is WILLFUL! If you have not already contacted your Senators, then I encourage you to do so. Their agenda to shut down our Second Amendment to justify their own existence has to stop.

The ATF has been scrutinizing and criticizing us over a .4% error rate that they deem to be willful, here is our now former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dodging questions on the ATF's record keeping on April 6, 2006 at a House Judiciary Committee Hearing:

REP. CHRIS CANNON (R-UT): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, Mr. Attorney General, we appreciate your being here. I want you to know that I share the concerns that have been expressed thus far, but would like to ask you a couple of programmatic questions. Since the 1970s, there have been significant questions about the accuracy of the National Firearms Act maintained by the ATF. The Gun Control Act of 1968 provided an amnesty whereby individuals could come forward and register weapons, which were often war trophies that they got from their parents who'd fought overseas. In 1998, an IG report found that the ATF contract employees had improperly destroyed NFA records, and ATF employees had not followed proper procedures during the registration. This bureaucratic mess has left many of my constituents with potentially illegal guns solely because of ATF mistakes. Would you support legislation allowing collectors to re-register so they are in compliance with the law, especially if they have the appropriate paperwork? And would you agree that an individual should not be faced with prosecution or the loss of a valuable weapon because of ATF's negligence?

ATTY GEN. GONZALES: Well, I don't want to prejudge whether or not there should or should not be prosecution, Congressman, without knowing the facts. I'm not familiar of the incident that you're describing, but I'd be happy to look into it.

REP. CANNON: Look, it's not an incident. There's a report that deals with MANY incidences.

ATTY GEN. GONZALES: I'm not familiar with the report, but I'm happy to discuss with you and look at legislation — I want to have the opportunity to look at that report.

REP. CANNON: Okay, thank you. We will follow up on it. It has a — I have just in my district many, many people who have this problem, and they have paperwork that came from the ATF that is — it's ignored by ATF.

ATTY GEN. GONZALES: That shouldn't be the case.

REP. CANNON: Thank you. I appreciate your stating on the record that it should not be the case, and we'll follow up with that.