The Wall Street Journal reports that numerous American gun dealer have lost their licenses as a result of President Joe Biden's gun control policies.
In fact, the outlet reports that, in the past fiscal year - which still has over a month to go - at least 122 gun dealers have lost their selling licenses. The fiscal year began in October 2022 and will conclude in September 2023.
This is a huge increase in license revocations. To put things into perspective, 90 licenses were revoked during the entire 2022 fiscal year and 27 were revoked during the 2021 fiscal year.
Going back a bit further, no more than 81 licenses were ever revoked during the administrations of either former President Donald Trump or former President Barrack Obama.
The agency that is revoking the licenses is the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
Biden has made it an emphasis of his presidency to push gun control. And, since he has not had the backing of Congress to do this, he has pursued this gun control agenda through other means, including executive action.
Among many other things, Biden has called on the ATF to crack down on gun dealers.
The reason why the number of license revocations is so much lower in the Trump and Obama administrations than it is in the Biden administration is that, rather than immediately revoking the licenses, those administrations would issue warnings to gun dealers who were in violation of the law.
The Biden administration, however, is going straight to revocations.
This could backfire on Biden, big time. The reason Trump and Obama only gave warnings is that they wanted the gun dealers to be allies of the federal government, helping the government by, for example, alerting it of suspicious gun buyers.
Now, however, gun dealers are threatening to stop helping the government should the Biden administration crackdown continue.
Fox News Digital obtained a statement on the matter from Biden's ATF.
ATF Spokesperson Kristina Mastropasqua said, "Federal Firearms Licensees are often our first line of defense against gun crime and are often a source of critical enforcement information that helps law enforcement identify straw purchasers and disrupt firearms trafficking schemes."
Matropasqua continued, "FFLs that willfully violate the law, however, must be held accountable. ATF conducts inspections to ensure compliance with applicable local, state, and federal laws and regulations and to educate licensees on the specific requirements of those laws and regulations."
