From the NRA Grassroots Alert:<\/p>\n
BATFE Requests \u201cEmergency\u201d
\nAuthority To Track Semi-Automatic Rifle Sales<\/p>\nFriday, December 17, 2010<\/p>\n
\nThe Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has proposed that it be given emergency authority for six months, beginning January 5, to require about 8,500 firearms dealers along the border with Mexico \u201cto alert authorities when they sell within five consecutive business days two or more semiautomatic rifles greater than .22 caliber with detachable magazines.\u201d A Washington Post story reporting on the BATFE proposal described that definition as being applicable to \u201cso-called assault weapons,\u201d but it would also apply to many rifles that have never been labeled with that term. <\/p>\n
The reporting requirement will apparently be imposed under the \u201cauthority\u201d the BATFE has used in the past to demand reporting of other types of transactions from certain limited groups of dealers over the past 10 years, but the new proposal is far broader than any previous use of this authority. Of course, there’s no law today that prevents dealers from reporting suspicious transactions (or attempted transactions) to the BATFE, and dealers often do so. The BATFE is also free to inspect dealers’ sales records\u2014either for annual compliance inspections or during a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n
NRA-ILA\u2019s chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, denounced the attempt to establish a registry of Americans who purchase semi-automatic rifles that gun control supporters ultimately want to see banned. “This administration does not have the guts to build a wall, but they do have the audacity to blame and register gun owners for Mexico’s problems,” Cox told the Post. “NRA supports legitimate efforts to stop criminal activity, but we will not stand idle while our Second Amendment is sacrificed for politics.”<\/p>\n
The Post says \u201cThe plan by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives revives a proposal that has languished at the Justice Department and in the Obama administration for several months,\u201d and that the gist of the plan was proposed by Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) last year. It its August 2009 Blueprint for Federal Action on Guns, MAIG indeed proposed that \u201cATF should identify the long guns most linked to crime and require dealers to report multiple sales of such guns.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea must have appealed to the BATFE, because in June of this year Congress\u2019 Government Accountability Office released a report noting that BATFE officials had claimed that U.S. efforts to stop the smuggling of firearms to Mexico are hindered by \u201ca lack of required background checks for private firearms sales, and limitations on reporting requirements for multiple sales.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curiously, in September, a draft of the Department of Justice\u2019s Inspector General\u2019s Office\u2019s unfavorable review of BATFE\u2019s Project Gunrunner, established to combat the trafficking of firearms to Mexico, didn\u2019t mention multiple sales at all. But the final version of the review, released in November, mentions \u201cmultiple sales\u201d 43 times and says \u201cthe lack of a reporting requirement for multiple sales of long guns \u2013 which have become the cartels\u2019 weapons of choice \u2013 hinders ATF\u2019s ability to disrupt the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether BATFE intends its plan as another expansion of its oft-criticized firearm sales record tracing empire, or to lay the groundwork for legislation or regulations restricting \u201cassault weapon\u201d sales, or to fatten the files the agency keeps at its National Tracing Center in West Virginia remains to be seen. And the legality of requiring sales reports on any long guns is also in doubt. When the Congress specifically imposed multiple sales reporting on handguns only, it implicitly stated its intention that the same requirement not apply to sales of long guns. <\/b><\/p>\n
However, it is crystal clear that some in the Obama Administration agree with those who believe the answer to crime is always more gun control. In September, MAIG blamed crime in states that have \u201cstrong\u201d gun laws, on states that don\u2019t have the same laws. And ever since President Obama took office, gun control supporters have been blaming Mexico\u2019s crime problem on America\u2019s gun laws.<\/p>\n
The fact that Mexico\u2019s multi-billion dollar drug cartels have machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, and other potent weaponry you cannot buy in the United States is, to gun control supporters, irrelevant. The fact that most of the cartels\u2019 guns have never been on this side of the U.S. border is, as far as they are concerned, a trifling inconvenience. The fact that the cartels will never have enough \u201cassault weapons\u201d or any other guns from the U.S. to hand out to all the Mexican policemen, soldiers and politicians on their payrolls, is, in their view, an unimportant detail. And the fact that the murder rate in the United States is at a 45-year low, while crime in Mexico is through the roof (the murder rate in Juarez is 115 times higher than in El Paso) is, they would certainly say, a contradiction best ignored.<\/p>\n
To read the BATFE’s Federal Register notice about the plan, and for information on how to send your comments, click here (http:\/\/edocket.access.gpo.gov\/2010\/pdf\/2010-31761.pdf). Comments about the proposal will be accepted for two months; if you choose to comment, please state your firm but polite opposition to the plan.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, the NRA will not only comment, but take whatever other action is appropriate to block this sweeping expansion of federal recordkeeping on gun owners. <\/b>Stay tuned.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n