Wow.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives went after a customer list of people who bought parts to manufacture AR-15s from several gun store locations in San Diego. At the heart of the dispute is one piece of the construct that is being reviewed by a San Diego court, and who had issued a restraining order against the ATF to hold off raiding the store until matters were settled in federal court first.
For whatever reason, the ATF violated the restraining order and went after the parts, the customer lists, and whatever else they felt like grabbing.
The U.S. district attorney for San Diego is said to be in possession of the customer lists; 5,000 people are said to be on the list.
Lots of questions on this story:
Did the ATF go to court to get the restraining order lifted? If they didn’t, isn’t this search and seizure illegal, and all information gleaned from the confiscated computers and lists considered to be fruit from the poisonous tree?
Is the ATF in contempt of court?
Who issued the order for the ATF to ignore the court order?
Did the ATF search warrant come from a higher federal court than the one who issued the restraining order? How does this work?
It look an awful lot like the ATF royally screwed up an open-and-shut case and violated a whole slew of federal laws related to the Second Amendment in the process. This will be an interesting story to follow.
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