The Waco disaster is one of a handful of cases there the federal government has shown it cannot be trusted blindly by anyone. It became a rallying cry, much like Ruby Ridge, and not without reason. The feds screwed the pooch, and people were killed who didn’t need to be killed. They did it.
But after Waco, the ATF supposedly learned. We wouldn’t have another situation like that ever again.
Only, we did.
Brian Malinowski ran the airport in Little Rock, Arkansas.
He had a good job, a loving family, and a hobby of selling guns. It wasn’t his livelihood, so under the rules at the time, he figured he was in the clear. He would rent a booth at gun shows and sell some firearms. Did he make money? Maybe. Probably, even. But the rules for who had to have an FFL at the time said nothing about profit exclusively. It wasn’t part of his livelihood, and that should have meant he was in the clear.
That means, as far as Malinowski knew, he was complying with the law.
The ATF, however, felt otherwise.
Malinowski is now dead, and his widow is suing the ATF. Over at The Gun Writer, Lee Williams took a look at the complaint, took out the legalese, and broke it down so we know exactly where the ATF screwed up.
And really, they screwed up by the numbers.
Bryan Malinowski was a lifelong collector. As a child he started collecting coins, a hobby he carried into his adulthood. Several years ago, his father handed him down his gun collection, which sparked Bryan’s interest in firearms. He became a gun collector and hobbyist.
In March 2024, federal regulations did not require an individual seller to hold a federal firearms license (FFL) as a dealer in firearms unless that individual’s principal objective in selling firearms was livelihood and profit.
At the time of his death, Bryan Malinowski was the highest paid city employee in the city of Little Rock as the Executive Director of the Little Rock Airport, where he earned an annual salary of more than $260,000.
Bryan did not believe that by selling at gun shows he was engaging in conduct “with the principal objective of livelihood and profit,” and therefore did not believe he needed an FFL to sell firearms at gun shows.
In December 2023, the ATF opened an investigation and began following Bryan to and from work and on the weekends, placing a tracker on his car, and surveilling his daily activities.
Bryan, however, was aware of this. The ATF had never reached out to him in any way. Agents had ever spoken with him except a couple who interacted with him while undercover. He had no idea anyone suspected him of a crime.
He was also a law-abiding citizen with no criminal history or history of violence. The ATF knew this. This appears to be clear in multiple documents from ATF officials.
When they planned to serve the search warrant–it was not an arrest warrant, mind you–they expected it to be a short in-and-out sort of thing, with Bryan cooperating the entire time. They expect it to go as easily as it could.
It should be noted that the Biden administration’s new “engaged in the business” rule hadn’t gone into effect yet. It had been announced, but was still something like a month away.
So far as Bryan Malinowski knew, he was still following the law, so he’d have no reason to offer any kind of resistance. The ATF agents planning the operation didn’t expect him to provide any, even if they thought he wasn’t.
Then what happened?
According to Agent Hicks, the vast majority of the search warrants executed by the Arkansas ATF team are dynamic entries, and that when ATF makes a dynamic entry into a home, they are usually “dealing with violent armed career criminals and drug dealers … [that’s] the bulk of the types of cases that we work.”
According to the Operations Plan, if a “reasonable time” passed with no response, the entry team leader would give the command for the team to conduct a “limited penetration.”
A “limited penetration” is a type of dynamic entry where an ATF agent carrying the shield enters first. The agent with the shield then stops a foot or two inside the threshold of the door, followed by additional agents visually securing each part of the home visible from the front door threshold. Agents then call out to the occupants.
In the wake of the chaos of ATF’s 1993 raid of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, the agency came under significant public criticism and congressional scrutiny for using excessive force in carrying out their enforcement responsibilities.
The resulting federal review of ATF’s use of force and operations concluded that a “dynamic entry, which relies on speed and surprise and may involve forced entry, is a preferred tactic during high-risk operations—those where ATF believes that suspects pose a threat of violence or in operations where evidence can be easily destroyed,” and that “a dynamic entry could be planned only after all other tactical options had been considered.”
…
Despite knowing that Bryan did not pose a danger to them and believing that he would cooperate, ATF agents planned for a dynamic entry, approaching the Malinowski home wearing tactical gear, including ballistic vests and tactical helmets.
Most were armed with semi-automatic Colt M4 carbine rifles chambered in 5.56 caliber—a common weapon used by the U.S. military. They also possessed 9mm handguns. One agent carried a battering ram, another carried a ballistic shield, and another had a Halligan pry tool.
The agents and TFOs decided to approach the home stealthily and under the cover of darkness and planned to cover the home’s video doorbell to obscure their presence.
The agents chose to prepare for and execute a dynamic entry despite the Malinowski search warrant execution not posing a threat of violence or evidence destruction.
They’d aborted an earlier planned search because Malinowski had left town, even though it wasn’t an arrest warrant, and they could have still searched the home without him there.
They could have talked to him at his office, where he would likely be unarmed, as it’s a secure facility that doesn’t permit firearms.
Instead, they made a dynamic entry on a man who had no reason to suspect he was under investigation by federal authorities. Further, it appears that their clothing did not clearly identify them as federal agents or local law enforcement officers, who assisted in the raid. What markings there were happened to be obscured by their body armor or other equipment.
Now, let’s understand something. Most people go through life with something of a “I have nothing to fear if I have nothing to hide” mentality. They don’t expect the cops to bust into their homes in the wee hours of the morning because they’re doing nothing that would warrant such a thing. Criminals might not be overly surprised, but regular folks? Yeah, they don’t expect the cops to kick in the door.
So, when a door gets kicked in by people wearing dark clothing and no visible insignias showing them to be law enforcement, even if they’re screaming who they are at the top of their lungs, many gun owners are going to view it as a home invasion and act accordingly.
There was a ballistic shield with the word “POLICE” on it, but guess what? It never made it inside the house. Malinowski never saw it.
Other efforts to identify themselves included a local officer chirping his siren and having his car’s blue lights on, but neighbors say they never saw or heard any of that, meaning Malinowski likely didn’t either.
But it wasn’t just that, either.
See, they’d put tape over the Malinowskis’ video doorbell. They failed to ring that doorbell, opting to knock instead. They made no other moves to notify Malinowski that law enforcement was outside seeking to come in.
From the moment when the knocking started, 28 seconds passed before agents decided to breach the door.
28 seconds.
Malinowski lived in a house of over 2,700 square feet. My house is nowhere near that large, and even if I hear the knocking at my front door immediately after it starts, it may take me more than a few seconds to get to the door. In the wee hours of the morning, before I may even be awake? 28 seconds isn’t nearly enough time.
Based on what we’re seeing here, this is really no different than how badly the ATF screwed up in Waco, and for what?
A man who, by all measures, seems to have honestly believed he did nothing wrong and sure looks to have been right about that is dead. The ATF has yet another black eye to go along with pretty much everything else the agency is known for–seriously, have they ever gotten it right?–and an innocent man is gone, his family left reeling, because agents on the ground got jumpy, antsy, and likely wanted to feel like real badasses for a change.
Absolutely pathetic.
Editor’s Note: The Biden administration’s weaponization of the ATF continues to do damage to our Second Amendment rights.
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