https://twitter.com/mzhemingway/status/1397624023778045955?s=21USA Today is working with an anti-gun group funded by failed Democrat presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg to attack a major gun industry trade group ahead of a Wednesday Senate hearing for President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), The Federalist has learned.
Nick Penzenstadler, a USA Today reporter who has partnered with Bloomberg’s anti-gun publication The Trace, has peppered the National Shooting Sports Foundation with loaded questions and factually inaccurate assumptions about NSSF’s work, according to correspondence reviewed by The Federalist. NSSF is a Connecticut-based gun industry trade group that helps members navigate and comply with federal firearms laws and ATF rules and regulations.
The apparent premise of the still-in-progress USA Today attack is that NSSF, which works directly with ATF to advise federal firearms licensees (FFLs) on how to comply with the agency’s regulations, has never worked to help the ATF obtain the resources it needs to ensure compliance from gun manufacturers or dealers.
To support its narrative, USA Today interviewed Richard Marianos, a former ATF official who allegedly claimed NSSF had never sought additional resources for ATF.
“[Marianos] says, in short: The NSSF is like the [National Rifle Association], [NSSF] never once has said the ATF needs more money, help support, or resources,” Penzenstadler claimed in correspondence reviewed by The Federalist.
The notion that ATF doesn’t have the funding it needs to conduct its compliance operations could become a major theme of the Senate confirmation hearing for David Chipman to be director of the ATF. Chipman, a controversial anti-gun activist who works for an anti-gun group founded by the wife of Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, was nominated by Biden in early April to helm an agency that has not had a full director since 2006, when Congress passed a law requiring the position to be subject to Senate confirmation.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/26/usa-today-prepares-fact-challenged-hit-piece-on-gun-industry-ahead-of-atf-director-nomination-hearing/
