Patrick G. Eddington
One of the primary purposes of Cato’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program is to uncover questionable or demonstrably unconstitutional or otherwise illegal conduct by Executive branch officials and entities. In my own work, I place a special emphasis on exposing actions by federal law enforcement organizations that violate constitutional rights.
To that end, this week Cato received a long overdue FOIA response from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that reveals the active targeting of a domestic civil society organization that promotes firearms ownership and training: the Socialist Rifle Association (SRA). First, some background.
On November 30, 2025, I submitted a FOIA to the FBI seeking records mentioning the following organizations:
- National Rifle Association
- Gun Owners of America
- Not F***ing Around Coalition
- Missouri Firearms Coalition
- Georgia Gun Owners
- Iowa Gun Owners
- Idaho 2nd Amendment Alliance
- Minnesota Gun Rights
- Iowa Gun Owners
- American Firearms Coalition
- Wyoming Gun Owners
- South Plains Patriots
- Socialist Rifle Association
To date, the FBI has supplied Cato with records on only four groups: the National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America (GOA), the Not F***kin Around Coalition (NFAC), and SRA. The Bureau provided Cato “no records” responses on the others.
The NRA-related records involve a March 2018 Philadelphia FBI field office investigation of death threats made against NRA supporters. The NFAC-related records involve press coverage from early July 2020 of an NFAC march/demonstration in Stone Mountain Park, Georgia—a site long associated with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The records on GOA involve an FBI Washington field office interview with an individual associated with GOA regarding an election law-related matter. The episodes involving the NRA, NFAC, or GOA mentioned here appear to be closed matters.
The records on the SRA, and specifically its Omaha and Chicago chapters, are another matter.
The FBI FOIA office letterhead memo accompanying the SRA records was itself quite revealing:
- The Bureau withheld at least 180 pages of responsive records on the SRA. That volume of material indicates a not insignificant amount of agent time was spent investigating one or both SRA chapters.
- Audio recordings were withheld pursuant to privacy and “law enforcement investigative techniques” FOIA exemptions. The audio could’ve been obtained via wiretaps or from an undercover FBI agent or informant in one or more of the chapters.
- Additional responsive records were located “in an investigative file” and were withheld per FOIA exemption b7(A), which “is exempt from disclosure in its entirety” as the material “pertains to records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”
The only document released on the SRA is dated February 17, 2021, and the originating office, case file number, and other critical details have been redacted by the Bureau.
The fact that the FBI invoked the b7(A) exemption means that the activity involving the two SRA chapters ostensibly remains under active investigation. An email from the author to SRA’s national office seeking comment on the FBI’s investigation of two SRA chapters has thus far gone unanswered.
Whether the investigation was opened prior to February 2021 is unknown at the moment. However, the fact that no criminal charges have been filed against any Omaha or Chicago SRA chapter members in a nearly five-year-old investigation leads this author to believe that there was never a valid criminal predicate to open an investigation in the first place.
This particular revelation comes just months after the Trump administration threatened to violate the Second Amendment rights of transgender citizens in response to a small number of gun violence incidents involving shooters who self-identified as transgender—a move that provoked a public backlash from major gun rights organizations.
In September, I noted that the administration’s proposed transgender citizen gun ban was only one example of the president’s pro-Second Amendment hypocrisy. The fact that Trump’s FBI is still actively investigating a politically disfavored group that supports Second Amendment rights takes this constitutional threat to the next level. This is clearly a matter that should be investigated immediately by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.