“As I have told the gun shop owners, the ATF has no right to either copy or remove their records and if any attempt is made, they should refuse it.”
Nope. The shop owners should *not* simply refuse aid the ATF thugs with breaking the law.
The shop owners *should* feel obligated to pick up the phone and call the local cops. The local cops should feel obligated to make an arrest of the law breaking fed thugs. The local prosecutors should feel obligated to throw the book at the fed thugs as well.
Or, we can all continue to behave as if we’re all just serfs, tug our forelocks and comply with whatever it is our appointed betters demand.
The gov, any gov, only gets away with this and all the other crap because we refuse to behave as citizens.
If one can open a channel for off-site recording, I'd go a step beyond, and say that legitimate ATF agents are forbidden from attempting to copy or remove the records without a court order; anyone seeking to do so will, by definition, not be a legitimate agent acting on legitimate basis. Attempting to perform an illegitimate action by threat of force constitutes robbery, and robbers will be dealt with as such.