“Unconstitutional” is how a whistleblower group is describing President Biden’s push to require background checks on gun sales between private citizens. 

A proposed new regulation from the Biden administration could require any private citizen who sells a firearm online to register as an federal firearms licensee, making the private sales of firearms between two individuals considerably more difficult.

In a letter sent Wednesday to Attorney General Garland, the nonprofit whistleblower group, Empower Oversight, alleges that the adoption of this rule represents an abuse of an authority that should rest solely with Congress. 

“Such an expansive rule that treats all private citizens the same as federal firearms licensees would circumvent the separation of powers in the Constitution,” the letter asserts, “which grants ‘all legislative Powers’ to Congress while requiring that the President ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’”

Last March, Mr. Biden ordered the Department of Justice to cough up information on who is dealing firearms, with the expressed goal  of moving “us as close as we can to universal background checks without new legislation.” Mr. Garland subsequently approved a proposed rule outlined in a 1,300-page document by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

By making the private sale of firearms more cumbersome, the expansive rule could also violate the Second Amendment protection that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It might also run afoul of the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, which forbids background checks for private individuals who are selling, buying, or exchanging guns as part of “a personal collection or for a hobby.”

Empower Oversight, which represented IRS agents in the probe into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes, is now requesting expansive documentation from the Justice Department, the ATF bureau, and its senior policy counsel, Eric Epstein, under the Freedom of Information Act. The records in question include documentation between those two bodies and the White House.