The Obama Adminstration’s blueprint for gun control, Now Is The Time, directly targets those of us affectionately known as Crufflers. Crufflers are those of use who hold Curios and Relics Federal Firearms Licenses for the purpose of collecting older firearms. Many who collect these firearms do so out of an interest in military history.
Our ability to collect weapons from overseas that have a military connection such as the M-1 Garands and M-1 carbines in South Korea are directly impacted by Obama’s proposals.
From page 7 of Now Is The Time:
Eliminate restrictions that force the ATF to authorize importation of dangerous
weapons simply because of their age:
ATF is required to authorize the importation of
certain “curio or relic” firearms, and outdated regulations include all firearms manufactured more
than 50 years ago in the definition of “curio or relic.” But today, firearms manufactured more than
50 years ago include large numbers of semiautomatic military-surplus rifles, some of which are
easily convertible into machine guns or otherwise appealing for use in crime. Congress should
get rid of restrictions that prevent ATF from changing this definition, enabling ATF to ensure
that firearms imported as curios or relics are actually of interest as collectibles, rather than letting
these rules be used as a way to acquire fully functional and powerful military weapons.
So if you have a collection of SKS carbines with examples from the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, and other Eastern European countries and need just to get the Albanian variant to complete your collection, Obama says no unless it is in the country already.
Say your tastes are a bit more esoteric and expensive and you want either a FN-49 in 7mm from Venezuela or a AG-42 Ljungmann from Sweden, you can forget it because they both are semi-automatic military-surplus rifles.
I wonder if someone in the Administration can explain just how screwing collectors is going to stop crime in the streets. For some reason, I don’t think so.
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