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A Missouri county official made recent headlines when he refused to comply with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — declaring the entire federal agency "unconstitutional."
And his experience with the agency, in part, stems from a raid by the agency on his brother's gun store.
"I want folks to know, that there is a time in this country that we're going to have to stand up and just say, 'No.' That we're not going to deal with these things anymore," Ike Skelton said in a November 2021 radio interview days after the ATF raid on his brother Jim Skelton's gun store in which the agency seized over 300 guns.
Ike Skelton said his brother was the victim of an entrapment scheme at the hands of the federal bureau. The brothers called the seizure a "constitutional violation."
Ike Skelton was later elected the presiding commissioner for Camden County in the fall of 2022. And this past month, he and five other county officials sent a letter to the ATF stating they will not assist "your unconstitutional agency in violating the rights of our citizens, God-given, constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms."
They cited Missouri's Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA), which penalizes authorities who enforce federal gun laws. In March, a federal judge ruled the law unconstitutional in a decision that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is appealing.
Jim Skelton, who obtained his federal firearms license three years prior to the 2021 raid, said officers told him during the seizure that he had incurred hundreds of infractions.
"How am I supposed to know that? I can't just take their packet, slap it to my forehead and absorb it," Jim Skelton told KRCG-TV at the time.
Jim Skelton was subsequently charged with a 15-count indictment, including allegations that he illegally sold weapons to undercover ATF agents and facilitated straw purchases (or permitted a person to buy a firearm on behalf of another person without recording the necessary information or running a background check), according to a December 2021 statement from the US Attorney's Office of the Western District of Missouri.
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In February, Jim Skelton signed a pretrial diversion agreement wherein he admitted to the offenses he was charged with, and the federal indictment against him will be dismissed if he "adheres to the conditions of the agreement for 18 months, which includes a prohibition against possessing any firearms," a spokesperson from the US attorney's office told Insider.
Kevin L. Jamison, Jim Skelton's attorney, told Insider that his client did not receive "sufficient advice" before opening his shop.
"A lot of people get into it because they like guns. They like gun people, and that's just simply not enough," Jamison said, adding that there are many "complexities of running a gun shop."
One of the conditions of Jim Skelton's pretrial diversion agreement is that he cannot reapply for or seek reinstatement of his license to sell firearms.
Presiding commissioner Ike Skelton previously told Insider that he wrote the April ATF letter, and said he disagrees with the federal judge's ruling on SAPA.
"I know that a federal judge, in my opinion, has incorrectly found our Second Amendment Preservation Act to be unconstitutional," Ike Skelton told Insider. "However, it is on appeal, and while it is on appeal, it is still of full force and effect in the state of Missouri."
He added that the ATF's inquiry to the county was about zoning information for several gun stores in the area. He said the agency could have contacted them on their own.
"It is our position to not comply and to not assist the federal government in enforcing what we believe are unconstitutional laws. We're not restricting them from enforcing their unconstitutional law," Ike Skelton told Insider. "They have every welcome to come down to Camden County, drive to those businesses, ask them for their business license."
Asked later about his brother's raided gun shop, Ike Skelton said it had no impact on his decision to run for office, which he was already planning to do.
"I support our Second Amendment very much. The only thing that my brother's raid did was confirm everything I thought about the ATF," Ike Skelton told Insider. "It's just who I am. I had nothing to do with what they did or did not do to my brother. It's not retribution."
"They're just not used to people standing up to them," he added of the ATF, and "the federal government in general."
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the ATF, which is federally tasked with regulating the firearms industry, said a county refusing to comply with providing the information is a first for him.
"This is the first time that we've run into this, certainly in our field division, and as far as I know, in the country, although there could certainly have been instances that I'm not aware of," John Ham, a spokesperson for the ATF's Kansas City Field Division, told Insider.
Ham said the ATF is required to ensure that federal firearms licensees aren't violating any state, city, or county ordinances as they seek to open a firearms business or renew their license.
"That's why this inquiry was made, and that's the only reason we would inquire about planning or zoning information about a particular property," Ham told Insider. "We have not, that I'm aware of, ever had a county tell us that they would no longer provide that information to us."
Ham added that the ATF will proceed to "do our jobs to the best of our ability without that information," but the bureau will have to "figure out what the next step" would be to access it.
"Ultimately, as part of what we do to license new entities and to keep existing federal firearms licensees in business, we very much depend on that information to make sure that there is no state, county, or city law or ordinance being violated," Ham said.
