Merrick Garland

Uncategorized

BOHICA – Pistol Brace Rule

January 13, 2023 by

We knew it was coming. Some had speculated it would be released during the SHOT Show. However, the weasel running the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland, decided to release the new pistol brace rule on the Friday before a long weekend. This is usually the case when you don’t want to make a big splash with an announcement.

In his press release, Garland said this:

“Keeping our communities safe from gun violence is among the Department’s highest priorities,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Almost a century ago, Congress determined that short-barreled rifles must be subject to heightened requirements. Today’s rule makes clear that firearm manufacturers, dealers, and individuals cannot evade these important public safety protections simply by adding accessories to pistols that transform them into short-barreled rifles.”

SBRs were not added to the NFA by Congress because they “must be subject to heightened requirements”. Rather, the original proposed NFA would have banned handguns and the drafters wanted to make sure that cutting down a rifle didn’t make it into a pistol. When Congress said there was no way in hell that they would ban pistols, the bit about SBRs was forgotten.

ATF Director Steve Dettelbach who knows diddly squat about firearms added:

“This rule enhances public safety and prevents people from circumventing the laws Congress passed almost a century ago. In the days of Al Capone, Congress said back then that short-barreled rifles and sawed-off shotguns should be subjected to greater legal requirements than most other guns. The reason for that is that short-barreled rifles have the greater capability of long guns, yet are easier to conceal, like a pistol,” said ATF Director Steven Dettelbach. “But certain so-called stabilizing braces are designed to just attach to pistols, essentially converting them into short-barreled rifles to be fired from the shoulder. Therefore, they must be treated in the same way under the statute.”

More bullshit. Screw the disabled for whom pistol braces were designed.

The rest of the release includes some gems as “more easily concealable”, “more destructive power”, and “heightened requirements”. In other words, the more they can demonize pistol braces, the better in their minds.

I’m sure this will be a topic of conversation at the SHOT Show. Likewise, I am sure that the lawsuits are already prepared and ready to be filed. It also increases the importance of the 5th Circuit’s ruling in Cargill v. Garland. Under the doctrine of lenity, the ATF cannot just say something is what it isn’t and thus make it a felony to possess one unregistered. That is the job of Congress.

The rule which was released today goes into effect in 120 days.

Here is the full rule and the factoring criteria.

Uncategorized

ATF Threat To Curios And Relics

May 19, 2022 by 3 Comments

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has released a new report entitled National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment: Firearms in Commerce. It was released May 5th and has received some attention in the media. That attention is concentrated primarily on privately made firearms and the increase in production of all firearms since the year 2000.

As they say, the devil is in the details and this 308-page report touches on a lot more than the increase in production and privately made firearms. While I may get into depth on other parts of the report and the BATFE’s recommendation in later posts, today I want to concentrate on what they have to say about curios and relics.

As things stand now, a C&R is defined by Title 27 Code of Federal Regulations §478.26. They can be a) firearms manufactured more than 50 years prior to today; b) firearms certified by the curator of a municipal, State, or Federal museum that exhibits firearms to be of museum interest; or c) any other firearm that gets a substantial part of its value from being “novel, rare, bizarre, or because of their association with some historical figure, period, or event.” Thus, a curio and relic could be any firearm ranging from a Ruger Model 77 made in April 1972 to Gen. George Patton’s personal handguns. In my own collection of curios and relics is a Winchester Model 50 semi-auto shotgun. It qualified under the 50 year rule and its only real claim to fame for me is that it was manufactured in 1957 which is the year of birth.

The report devotes parts of two pages to curios and relics as well as C&R FFLs. As I have held this FFL since 1997, this was of particular interest. First they note that the number of 03 FFLs has increased by 148% since 2000 with there being 59,457 currently. Those of us with this license now compose 40% of all FFLs. Much is that proportional increase is a result of the decrease in numbers of 01 FFLs due to increased regulations and the anti-gun policies of the Obama and Biden administrations. Second they note while they do have a list of all firearms classified as curios and relics since 1972, they do not have a data system that tracks information on these firearms, museums that certify museum interest, etc. They then note their data analysis questions the 50-year rule. Therein lies the rub.

Here are their recommendations (Page 162):

1. ATF should receive funding to develop a data system that tracks the history of each C&R firearm on the list to include: full description of the firearm, the date the firearm is added to the C&R list, identification of the criteria met to add the firearm to the C&R list, the person making the request, what museum stated the firearm was of historical interest, and who stated the firearm was rare, novel, or collectible. The three criteria for approving a firearm to be added to the C&R list are found in 27 C.F.R. §478. As possible, this information should be catalogued for ATFs current list C&R List -January 1972 through April 2018.

2. DOJ should review the C&R criteria in 27 C.F.R. §478 to determine if the “more than 50 years old” factor is still valid in determining that a firearm is truly a curio or relic. The C&R provisions were enacted in 1968 and firearms more than 50 years old at that time were manufactured prior to 1918. Today, firearms that are more than 50 years old were manufactured prior to 1972 and this now includes a wide variety of modem firearms to include some AR-15 type rifles, AK-47 type rifles, SKS rifles, and semi-automatic handguns. Importation, transfer, and background check regulations are different for firearms on the
C&R list and holders of a Type 03 FFL.

As I see it, these recommendations boil down to two things. First, BATFE says we want money to fund what we should have already been doing with existing funding. Second, BATFE is saying Springfield 1903s we were cool with but those icky ARs, AKs, SKSs, and semi-auto handguns give us the vapors.

Unfortunately, the Gun Control Act of 1968 gives the Attorney General the authority to define a curio or relic by regulation. Given the anti-gun, anti-rights bias of both Merrick Garland and President Joe Biden, this is a real problem. I could foresee them categorically removing the 50-year rule from what constitutes a curio and relic and limiting them to what is on the list. January 20. 2025 as well as January 2023 cannot get here soon enough.

Uncategorized

Time Is Not On David Chipman’s Side

July 26, 2021 by 6 Comments

The longer that the debate on David Chipman to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives goes on, the less likely it is that he will be confirmed. One reason is that it gives the opposition even more time to dig up his public record of making snarky and snide remarks like that in the video below. That is not to mention it gives time for investigators to dig through public testimony he has given before state and national legislative bodies that contain outright falsehoods.

This video excerpt in which Chipman ridicules new gun owners as prepping for the Zombie apocalypse and as Tiger King wannabes was posted the Republican National Committee’s research arm.

Earlier this week, you had a story in Politico in which Sen. Dick Durbin, Senate Judiciary Chair and Majority Whip, saying that Chipman had “a lot of issues”. That was obvious recognition that the nomination was in trouble.

Then yesterday, the British newspaper The Guardian ran a long story on their website saying the nomination is stalling. They noted the Attorney General Merrick Garland has had to step in and push for his confirmation.

The intervention was the latest warning sign that the nomination of Chipman might be in trouble – which would be a serious blow to gun control advocates and those appalled at America’s shocking rates of gun violence.

“As you all know, ATF is on the frontlines of our efforts to battle gun violence,” Garland said during a visit to the agency’s headquarters on Thursday. “We are very hopeful that the Senate will soon act.”

Now you have a story in the Huffington Post that is asserting that it is really the gun industry in the form of the National Shooting Sports Foundation that is the primary opponent of Chipman. This is because they are running two television ads in West Virginia and Maine. The author of this piece Kevin Robillard accuses the NSSF of adopting “NRA’s over-the-top playbook.” Of course, Chipman’s longtime employer, Giffords, jumped on the story to promote the lie that opposition to Chipman is based on trying to sell guns.

What this story ignores is that every gun rights organization at every level is in opposition to Chipman. This includes the NRA, GOA, CCRKBA, and the Firearms Policy Coalition at the national level. At the state level, I know for sure that organizations such has Grass Roots North Carolina have mobilized their members in opposition with alerts and pleas to call their senators.

As my friend Chris Knox said on Twitter in response to Robillard’s article, “Blue check media can’t comprehend a grassroots resistance without some organization at the helm. Movement to #StopChipman is not top-down.” He is correct. I didn’t wait for the NRA or GOA to tell me to oppose Chipman. The moment he was nominated I called both of my US senators saying “Hell, No!”

Whether or not the nomination succeeds or fails will come down to four Democrats and an Independent who caucuses with them. They are Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), and Sen. Angus King (I-ME). They are all officially undecided. All it will take is for one of these senators to vote nay and the confirmation goes down the drain. If you would like to contact them even if you don’t “officially” live in their state, Grass Roots North Carolina a link that might be helpful. I know that the email I sent Sinema went through and I got a response from her.

I think that these five are waiting to see which way the wind blows and are really hoping that the nomination is eventually withdrawn so that they don’t have to publicly commit one way or another. If the Chipman nomination is withdrawn, they will still be able to say (lie) that they support the Second Amendment and not have a vote for Chipman thrown in their face to refute that.

I had been using the analogy that nomination Chipman to head BATFE was the equivalent of putting a vegan in charge of the meat inspection division of the USDA. I came across a better analogy – Chipman is the equivalent of nomination an anti-childhood-vaxxer to head the FDA or CDC. In these days and times that does get the message across.