By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Peter Brennan, his wife Jacqueline Shaw and their eight-year-old son Archie Brennan will never forget the day the ATF raided their Texas gun-parts shop, which is located in northeast Texas near the Oklahoma border.
“We pulled up to our gun shop in an old GMC truck and all these cars surrounded us,” Peter Brennan told the Second Amendment Foundation. “They had seven cars and a load of tactical guys jumping out. We didn’t realize what was happening. We hadn’t done anything wrong?”
The agents tried separating the family.
“They kept trying to yank my son away from his mom,” Brennan said. “These agents – some wearing man-buns – were trying to act as hard as nails. A lot of people were watching. They handcuffed me and put me in one of their cars.”
“You know why we’re here – not by accident,” one of the agents told Brennan.
“That’s debatable,” Brennan replied, as they tore his shop apart. “Like you guys don’t make mistakes. Nothing in the shop is illegal in Texas. I want to get a lawyer.”
The ATF agents seized a lot of property: CNC tools, buffer tubes, AR parts and aluminum blanks that were just blocks of metal. ATF agents pulled the hard drive out of Brennan’s CNC machine, which he had recently purchased for $170,000.
“I sunk everything we owned to buy that,” Brennan said. “I was in a dark hole.”
Agents then took the couple and their son to their home to execute yet another search warrant.
“They took our passports, which we still don’t have back, along with phones and computers – all of our money. They told us to ring them in a couple days on a Thursday. All I had in my pockets was 40 dollars,” Brennan said.
The ATF threatened the couple if they ever decided to get new passports and return to Australia.
“They said if we went to our embassy they would arrest us. That’s unconstitutional. They shut down my YouTube channel. We had no food and they took all our money,” Brennan said. “We were supposed to go to England a week after the raid.”
The raid took place nearly two years ago. So far, the couple has not been charged with any crime, but Brennan’s family cannot leave the United States because they have no passports.
“We have kids in Australia we haven’t seen for two years,” he said. “It seems like a bad movie. Australia and America are allies. I love this place and fought hard to be here. I would happily trade my Australian citizenship for American. If you want to live in a communist country go to Australia.”
The ATF agents’ use of force was unconscionable, Brennan said.
“They pointed their guns at a seven-year-old boy,” he said. “What was he gonna do to them?”
“He now has tics as a result of all that,” Archie’s mom Jacqueline Shaw said. “They wouldn’t let him come to me or my husband.”
Texas silencers
After he opened his gun-parts shop, many of Brennan’s customers began asking him about silencers, which are also known as suppressors.
“We would get asked about them all the time,” he said. “They said you can sell suppressors in Texas if they’re made in Texas and stay in Texas. They showed us the law.”
One of Brennan’s friends worked for the local sheriff’s office. He told Brennan he had watched Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sign the state law, known as Texas House Bill 957, in September 2021.
The state law is very clear: “A firearm suppressor that is manufactured and remains in this state is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of the United States Congress to regulate interstate commerce.”
The state law requires that silencer parts – the “basic material” to make one – are not subject to federal regulation. Also, any suppressors made in the Lone Star State must have “Made in Texas” clearly stamped on them.
Brennan began manufacturing silencers, according to the state law. He estimates that 80-percent of his buyers were law enforcement.
“We began selling them to State Troopers, Reno (Texas) Police and other local police forces,” his wife said.
“We had Texas State Troopers coming to our house asking about them,” Brennan said.
The couple even had signs put on the windows of their shop, telling potential customers of the silencers that were made inside, subject to Texas law. Even the ATF paid them no nevermind.
“An ATF agent came to visit, and he never mentioned anything about suppressors,” Brennan said. “The only thing he cared about were AR braces. All the suppressor parts were made locally. Not once did the agent say anything about them. This was about three months before they raided us.”
The agent was present during the raid. He told Brennan that he wished he would have asked about suppressors.
“I told him I never sold any guns. The only guns I ever had were mine. I never had an FFL. I didn’t want one. I never wanted to sell firearms. I still don’t want an FFL,” he said.
The agent tried to interview Brennan’s wife.
“I told the agent interviewing me that he was here six weeks before the raid, and he never told us to stop making them, the suppressors,” she said. “The interview stopped, and he turned the camera off.”
ATF’s nonresponse
Calls to the ATF in Texas were not returned. However, their legal opinion about Texas HB957 is well known. The agency issued an “Open Letter to all Texas Federal Firearm Licensees” shortly after Texas passed their state law in 2021.
“HB957 claims to exempt silencers (also known as suppressors) that are manufactured in Texas, and which remain in Texas, from Federal firearms laws and regulations, including the federal registration requirements. However, because HB957 directly conflicts with federal firearms laws and regulations, federal law supersedes HB957. In summary, all provisions of the Gun Control Act (GCA) and the National Firearms Act (NFA), including their corresponding regulations, continue to apply to FFLs and other persons in Texas,” the letter states.
In other words, the ATF takes zero notice of state’s rights. Homemade silencers, according to the ATF, remain a violation of federal law.
Legal limbo
Brennan and his wife spoke with their attorney about two weeks ago.
“He told us it’s been 15 months since he last talked to the ATF and said, ‘What do you want me to do?’” Brennan said. “I got led down this path by a bunch of cops – you know what I mean – and an ATF guy who turned up six weeks before the ATF raided us, who only cared about the braces. He didn’t care about the cans.”
To date, the only correspondence the couple has received from the ATF was a forfeiture letter. Brennan has returned to YouTube and has more than three-thousand subscribers. He and his family are slowly trying to recover financially. His gun-parts shop is making AK products and ear protection for police, rangers and wildlife officers.
Said Brennan: “The ATF could have sent us a cease-and-desist letter. Instead, they just raided us. We learned the other day they weren’t supposed to take our passports, but they did. They never filed charges against us, because if they do, it will allow the politicians to use it. We’ve lost everything. Now, if we get kicked out of here, we’ve got nowhere to go.”
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