Border Patrol Will Deploy Elite Tactical Agents to Sanctuary Cities: What Happens When The ATF Raids Your Second Amendment Sanctuary City, for Your Illegal Weapons?

Peter Graves Roberts
5 min readFeb 17, 2020
Thousands of gun-rights activists — some brandishing their military-style rifles — crowded the streets surrounding Virginia’s Capitol building Monday to protest plans by the state’s Democratic leadership to pass gun-control legislation. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

Friday night, August the 14th: Pat Henry is just finishing up his Jeopardy rerun and there’s a knock at the door. One room over, his wife, Virginia, and their two kids have just sat down to supper. Standing up, Pat sees through the screen door several armed agents, standing in his front yard. He opens the door and finds himself face to face with a familiar looking stranger. Adrenaline surges though his body as he tries to make sense of the threat he’s perceived. He can’t think of who this guy is, or why he’s standing on his porch. He can’t think of anything but his family’s safety.

The armed man is from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He begins to introduce himself. “Patrick Jones Henry? My name is Agent Brother and I’m with the Bureau of…” and it hits him.

Weeks prior, Pat was at his neighborhood gun range with his buddy Hank. The two of them have shot regularly for the last thirty years- ever since they started worked the mines together. In May, their state legislature passed a law banning large-capacity rifle magazines, but nobody at the gun range ever seemed to notice when Pat still used his thirty round AR-15…

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Peter Graves Roberts

Pete Roberts is a poet, punk writer, backseat journalist and objector. Born and broken in Portsmouth, VA, he now works from the Outer Banks of North Carolina.