The gun-rights group Gun Owners of America (GOA) is blowing the whistle on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division for revealing sensitive tax and firearm information of a GOA member.
According to an April 17 news release, GOA is asking the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General to investigate what it calls a “a series of alarming breaches in which the government intentionally filed, on a public court docket, the sensitive tax returns of a GOA member, along with details of this person’s private firearm collection.”
According to GOA, during ongoing litigation in the case Silencer Shop Foundation v. BATFE, DOJ attorneys representing the ATF intentionally filed the sensitive tax information and National Firearms Act (NFA) tax returns of a GOA member on a public docket. These disclosures included two approved ATF “Forms 1,” which legally constitute protected tax returns. In a negligent (but presumably inadvertent) move, the government failed to redact the GOA’s member’s name, city, and state.
The ATF then provided a declaration detailing the exact number of NFA items owned by the GOA member, essentially providing a “map” of the member’s personal firearm collection to the public.
Under 26 U.S.C. § 6103, NFA registration forms are strictly prohibited from public disclosure. However, according to GOA, even after being alerted to the breach and attempting to correct the filings, the DOJ inexcusably publicized much of the same sensitive information a second time.
“The sensitivity of this information cannot be understated, nor can the severity of DOJ and ATF’s breach of personal privacy and possible violations of federal law,” GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt wrote in his letter to Acting Inspector General William M. Blier.
The investigation seeks to uncover whether these actions constitute a breach of federal statutes, regulations, or policies, what warnings, if any, the ATF provided to the DOJ regarding the sensitivity of the data, and what new procedures will be implemented to prevent the government from ‘doxing’ gun owners in the future.
John Velleco, executive vice president of Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), said GOA will not stand idly by while the government weaponizes protected tax information on a public forum.
“We are as committed to defending our members’ privacy as we are to defending the Second Amendment, and this egregious violation must be reviewed with the utmost seriousness,” Velleco said.
Pratt added that GOA takes member privacy very seriously and won’t back down in the fight to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“The government has no right to dox gun owners or broadcast their private tax returns to the world,” Pratt concluded. “GOA will not stay silent while federal agencies flout the law to target our members.”