Category: Bureaucraps

Remember when we were told he was a nonpartisan moderate?

Second Amendment Roundup: “He’s at it again!” Merrick Garland proposes ever-more intrusive ATF regulations.

Attorney General Merick Garland is proposing new ATF regulations that would expand definitions in the Gun Control Act to require ever-more gun owners to obtain federal dealer licenses. This follows a new regulation redefining “frame or receiver” and another one reclassifying pistols with braces as “short-barreled rifles.” As I’ve posted previously,

those regulations have run smack into the Fifth Circuit’s brick wall, The Fifth Circuit preliminarily enjoined enforcement of the pistol brace rule. It allowed a vacatur of the frame or receiver rule to remain in place, although the Supreme Court stayed the vacatur of that rule pending disposition of the case in that Court.

These three new, expansive regulatory schemes are unprecedented since passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA). This third proposed rule reminds one of dinosaur Rex’s scream in Toy Story: “He’s at it again!”

Ordinary gun owners are not required to obtain any kind of license from ATF. To exercise the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, a person must be able to obtain firearms, and is free to dispose of firearms without a license as long as the person is not in the gun business. The proposed regulation purports to require many such persons to obtain a firearm dealer’s license.

The GCA defines “dealer” as “any person engaged in the business of selling firearms at wholesale or retail.” The term “engaged in the business” means “a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business to predominantly earn a profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms….” But the definition “shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”

As if that’s not enough, “to predominantly earn a profit” means that “the intent underlying the sale or disposition of firearms is predominantly one of obtaining pecuniary gain, as opposed to other intents, such as improving or liquidating a personal firearms collection.” If you’re wondering why the definitions are so detailed, it’s because the original GCA had no definition of “engaged in the business” and numerous gun owners who made only occasional sales were being prosecuted because they didn’t have licenses.

In a 1982 report, the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Judiciary Committee charged: “Agents anxious to generate an impressive arrest and gun confiscation quota have repeatedly enticed gun collectors into making a small number of sales—often as few as four—from their personal collections. … The agents then charged the collector with having ‘engaged in the business’ of dealing in guns without the required license.”

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Oklahoma Sheriff Opens an Investigation Into ATF SWAT Raid on FFL’s Home.

Oklahoma’s Pushmataha County Sheriff’s Office has opened an investigation into the ATF for their recent SWAT raid of one of their county’s most respected residents, Russell Fincher, PCSO Undersheriff Dustin Bray said Tuesday. 

No one at the ATF warned the Sheriff’s Office in advance that highly armed federal agents would be conducting the SWAT raid, the Undersheriff said.

We weren’t apprised of anything,” Bray said. “We are a Second Amendment County and we are going to protect our citizens here. We are not going to enforce any gun law or rule that violates the constitution.” 

Bray did not yet know whether the investigation would yield criminal charges against ATF agents, adding, “That’s a good one for the Attorney General. The thing I’m looking at are more constitutional issues than criminal, such as civil rights violations.” 

Bray said his agency began a “deep dive” into ATF’s conduct, but this investigation was put on hold because of an unrelated double-homicide in the county followed by two officer-involved shootings. The PCSO has around a dozen deputies who are responsible for patrolling a county of more than 1,400 square miles. 

Undersheriff Bray, a 21-year law enforcement veteran who has been at PCSO since 2018, was most concerned about ATF’s apparent disregard for standard deconfliction protocols, which are commonplace among state, county and local law enforcement agencies.  

The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies defines confliction as “the process of determining when law enforcement personnel are conducting an event in close proximity to one another at the same time. Events include law enforcement actions such as raids, undercover operations, surveillance, or executing search warrants.” 

In other words, deconfliction prevents two groups of cops from showing up at the same location at the same time and pointing guns at each other. 

“They (ATF) didn’t do any deconfliction with Pushmataha County,” Bray said. “We had no idea they were coming. We didn’t hear anything about it until weeks had passed. Nothing ever got reported to us. I’m not a fan of that. The Sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer of the county.”

ATF Special Agent Theodore Mongell, who led the SWAT raid at Fincher’s home, was unwilling to talk about deconfliction or the Sheriff’s Office’s ongoing investigation.

“Sir, per the last conversation we had, I can’t give any comment at this time,” Mongell said Wednesday. “This is a confidential investigation – a criminal investigation. I will forward your information to my supervisors for comment.”

No one from ATF’s Oklahoma City Field office or ATF’s Tulsa Satellite Office returned the call.

Background 

A story published Tuesday revealed that Oklahoma state Rep. Justin “JJ” Humphrey sent a letter to Oklahoma’s Governor, Attorney General and other law enforcement officials demanding an investigation into the ATF raid of Fincher’s home. Fincher is one of Humphrey’s constituents, a parttime gun dealer, a high school history teacher and a Baptist pastor. 

According to a press release, Humphrey said he was contacted by Fincher after a dozen ATF SWAT team members bearing “automatic weapons” raided Fincher’s home, handcuffed him on his porch in front of his 13-year-old son and coerced and threatened him into relinquishing his Federal Firearm License.

“If this report is true, and I have every reason to believe it is, then it would appear the ATF’s actions constitute a gross misuse and abuse of their federal police powers,” Humphrey said in the press release.

Fincher, Humphrey wrote in the letter, “is a distinguished figure in our community, serving both as pastor and schoolteacher in the small community of Clayton, Oklahoma. He is known as a respected member of the community, and I have every reason to believe his account. If proven true, the actions of the ATF agents could be seen as a severe misuse and abuse of their federal law enforcement authority.”

Pending 

Communications staff for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond did not immediately return calls or emails seeking their comments for this story. 

A GiveSendGo account has been created to help with Fincher’s legal fees.

PRIVACY: It’s Been a Good Week for Keeping Bossy Busybodies From Spying on Your Phone

Tech giant Apple is standing firm on protecting customers’ privacy rights, even on one of the thorniest, hot-button issues — and that’s not the only good news this week on the privacy front.

Today’s issue is preventing the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from one encrypted device (like a pedo’s smartphone) to someone else’s. It’s a serious problem but one with no easy solution.

Apple had a couple of years ago planned to build CSAM-scanning software right into the iOS operating system that runs every iPhone. Had it been implemented, software known as client-side scanning would examine literally every photo on every updated iPhone in the world, including embedded location data. Privacy groups were aghast at the prospect. Had the scanner been built into iOS, there would have been nothing preventing it from scanning for anything the government might demand in one of its infamous secret warrants.

“Hi, Apple? This is Jerry from the FBI. Yeah, we’re going to need you to scan everybody’s photo libraries for MAGA hats near the Capitol building on or around January 6, 2021. And next month we’re going to have you start sending us location data from gun stores. Kthnxbi.”

Apple scrapped those plans last year. I kinda doubt that CEO Tim Cook was worried much about the MAGA folks, but a privacy win is a privacy win. This week, however, a new anti-CSAM group called Heat Initiative presented its demand that the company “detect, report, and remove” CSAM photos and videos from its cloud servers, according to an Ars Technica report. Going further, Heat Initiative also wants Apple to create even more CSAM reporting tools for users.

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Court issues injunction on forced reset triggers case

Forced reset triggers do one thing. As soon as you fire the gun, it forces the trigger to reset so you can follow up with another shot very quickly.

Some people seem to think that being able to shoot quickly is a bad thing.

Unfortunately, some of those people apparently work at the ATF and now Rare Breed, a company that makes forced reset triggers, is dealing with the agency in court.

Also, unfortunately, their case had a setback on Tuesday.

The U.S. government on Tuesday won a court injunction blocking a firearms company from selling after-market triggers that let gun enthusiasts convert AR-15 style rifles into weapons that can shoot as fast as machine guns.

U.S. District Judge Nina Morrison in Brooklyn said the Department of Justice was likely to prove that the “forced-reset triggers” sold by Rare Breed Triggers LLC and its owners were illegal machine guns under federal law.

The government said rifles equipped with Rare Breed’s FRT-15 triggers were capable of firing faster than military-grade M-16 machine guns, which can fire at least 700 rounds a minute.

In a 129-page decision, Morrison said the defendants defrauded customers by saying its FRT-15s were “absolutely” legal, despite having failed to win Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives approval for their sale.

She also highlighted alleged efforts by Fargo, North Dakota-based Rare Breed to obstruct the government from tracking and confiscating the devices, including by destroying sales records and using fake names on packages sent through the mail.

“Defendants declined to seek ATF classification of the FRT-15 and instead simply assure RBT’s customers that the device was ‘legal’ precisely because they knew that allowing ATF to examine their device before bringing it to market might kill their proverbial golden goose,” the judge wrote.

Morrison, a Biden appointee, seems to simply assume that the ATF is right here, that making a gun shoot faster somehow makes it a machine gun.

One would think, however, that a federal judge would at least look up the definition of a machine gun in federal law.

From the National Firearms Act:

(b) Machinegun. The term ‘machinegun’ means any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. 

The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.

Here’s the thing, though. Forced reset triggers don’t fire multiple rounds with a single pull of the trigger. It simply allows one to pull the trigger much faster.

Morrison seemingly claims that because the forced reset triggers allow one to shoot as fast as a machine gun, it should be regulated as such, but the law makes no such case.

In other words, she’s taking the ATF’s made-up crap as actual law and saying the government would likely win the case based on that made-up crap.

I fail to see how she can say such a thing, though. I’m not an attorney, mind you, but it seems rather bizarre to argue that the government will win on a case where they claim a device turns a rifle into a machine gun when the device does nothing to change the weapon in any way that meets the legal definition of a machine gun.

Then again, as a Biden appointee, it’s unlikely that Morrison is really that concerned with the actual law when it comes to restricting what ordinary Americans can own with regard to firearms and accessories.

ATF FFL DEFINITION EXPANSION ISN’T JUST UNCONSTITUTIONAL. IT’S UNFEASIBLE.

The Biden administration is forcing the federal agency charged with overseeing the strictly-regulated firearm industry to tighten a vice grip on private gun owners, claiming if they privately sell guns and offer to sell more, they’re “engaged in the business.”

This is just the latest salvo from President Joe Biden, who declared from the debate stage in 2019 that the firearm industry is “the enemy.”

Now, as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is snuffing out firearm retailers at a record pace due to an unrelenting attack of historically-high firearm license revocations under the guise of its “zero-tolerance” policy, the administration has unilaterally proposed an expansion of the definition of who is required to obtain a dealer’s license and therefore run a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verification to transfer a firearm. Recall, failing to obtain a dealer’s license when required by law is a crime.

This latest gambit does more than exceed the ATF’s statutory authority. It’s an unfeasible requirement. There is no way ATF could keep up with another 328,000 federal firearm licensees.

President Joe Biden continues to barrel around Congress to generate unconstitutional laws when Congress stands against him trampling on citizens’ rights. That’s after conceding he’s powerless to do anything without Congressional action.

Unilaterally Making Law and Criminals

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the proposed rule that would redefine who qualifies as “engaged in the business” and would require a federal firearms license (FFL) and run a NICS background check when selling or transferring a gun, as well as to maintain all the required records and paperwork. This is a thinly-veiled attempt to create a universal background check scheme – which even the Department of Justice (DOJ) has admitted would necessitate a federal firearm registry to work. That’s forbidden by federal law.

The irony is, Congress clarified the “engaged in the business” definition in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA). Congress made a one-word change to the “engaged in the business” definition by removing the word “livelihood” the courts had effectively read out of the statute. The law still defines a firearm dealer as, “a person who devotes time, attention and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business to predominantly earn a profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms, but such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”

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ATF Proposes Significant Overhaul of “Personal Collection” Definitions

The newly proposed regulations by the ATF aim to dramatically revise key terms such as “personal collection,” “personal collection of firearms,” and “hobby.” These revisions have the potential to significantly impact how the agency regulates firearms sales and ownership. Historically, there have been exemptions for individuals involved in occasional sales or trades of firearms, either to augment their own collection or as a hobby. This existing language was left untouched by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which became effective in June 2022. However, the ATF is citing this act to introduce these sweeping changes.

Legal Information Institute:

(C) as applied to a dealer in firearms as defined in section 921(a)(11)(A), a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business to predominantly earn a profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms, but such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.

The proposed changes would significantly narrow these exemptions. According to the new rule, “personal collection” would be limited to firearms acquired for study, display, or recreational activities like hunting and target shooting. Notably, firearms acquired primarily for self-defense or with the intent of resale for profit would be excluded from the definition of a “personal collection.”

E. Definition of “Personal collection,” “personal collection of firearms,” and “personal firearms collection”

Specifically, this rule proposes to define “personal collection,” “personal collection of firearms,” and “personal firearms collection” as “personal firearms that a person accumulates for study, comparison, exhibition, or for a hobby (e.g., noncommercial, recreational activities for personal enjoyment such as hunting, or skeet, target, or competition shooting).” This reflects a common definition of the terms  “collection” and “hobby.”85 The phrase “or for a hobby” was adopted from 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(21)(C), which excludes from the definition of “engaged in the business” firearms acquired “for” a hobby. Also expressly excluded from the definition of “personal collection” is “any firearm purchased for resale or made with the predominant intent to earn a profit” because of their inherently commercial nature. 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(21)(C).

This shift in language could put people at risk of being classified as “firearms dealers,” even if their activities were previously considered a hobby under the old rules. Furthermore, individuals who occasionally sell or trade firearms for personal reasons, such as needing money or wanting to change their collection, would find themselves in a precarious position under the new definitions.

It’s worth noting that these proposed changes were not ratified by Congress and could have far-reaching implications. They appear to exclude self-defense as a legitimate reason for owning firearms, a purpose which has been constitutionally protected under the Second Amendment.

While the new rule is meant to standardize definitions, it grants the ATF greater flexibility in interpretation, potentially altering long-established norms in the regulation of firearms. Critics argue that these changes seem designed to narrow the scope of acceptable reasons for firearm ownership, thereby curtailing individual freedoms protected under the Second Amendment.

 

FBI Admits It Has Lots Of Documents About Targeting Christians

If ever you thought that the Biden Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Deep State that we knew had been used to punish groups since the days of the Obama administration, had been weaponized to target Christians, here is hard proof.

I mean, we already HAD proof in the horrendous case of Mark Houck, who was arrested by the FBI (after a SWAT raid at his home that traumatized his family) for alleged violations of the FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act. Houck was acquitted in federal court, which left a whole lot of egg on the face of the DOJ. But it has become increasingly clear that the DOJ has a target on pro-life activists and parent groups that support traditional values – and as a result, it has turned its Eye of Sauron onto those they call “radical traditionalist” Christians.

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) submitted a FOIA request to the FBI, and then sued when the FBI failed to comply. Well, the FBI did finally submit a response, which chief counsel Jay Sekulow (whom you may remember as one of Donald Trump’s lawyers from his first impeachment) is now highlighting on Twitter/X.


For some clarity, here is some of what the ACLJ requested in the FOIA.

Some of our specific requests are reproduced below:

1) All records of communications between or including the FBI’s Director, Deputy Director, Chief of Staff, General Counsel, or any of their senior staff or assistants, or of any other FBI official of a GS-13 or appointee level or higher personnel (including forwarded email messages or CC or BCC email messages), about pro-life people OR Catholicism (including adherents of Catholicism) OR Christianity (including adherents of Christianity) – all in the context of analysis, threat assessment, domestic terrorism, or the monitoring of such people.

2) All records of briefings or communications between or including the FBI’s Director, Deputy Director, Chief of Staff, General Counsel, or any of their senior staff or assistants, or of any other FBI official of a GS-13 or appointee level or higher personnel (including forwarded email messages or CC or BCC email messages), that mention the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19-1392, 597 U.S. __ (2022).

3) All records of communications between or including the FBI Richmond field office personnel, including analysists, senior staff or assistants, or of any other FBI official of a GS-13 or appointee level or higher (including forwarded email messages or CC or BCC email messages), about the memo described in the “Background” section above.

4) All records of communications between or including the FBI Richmond field office personnel, including analysists, senior staff or assistants, or of any other FBI official of a GS-13 or appointee level or higher (including forwarded email messages or CC or BCC email messages), about pro-life people OR Catholicism (including adherents of Catholicism) OR Christianity (including adherents of Christianity) – in the context of analysis, threat assessment, domestic terrorism, or the monitoring of such people.

Congratulations to Catholics and Protestants – full ecumenical parity has been achieved, for we are all seen as threats to the Department of Justice if we follow Biblical teachings! Wow. Mary I and Elizabeth I are surely thrilled with this development.

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Liberty Safes apparently builds in a ‘backdoor’ passcode – like a master key – on its safes with electronic digital dials. Maybe all electronic dials are made with such.

Is liberty safe with Liberty Safe?

Last week, an Arkansas man was arrested in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Nathan Earl Hughes has four charges pending against him, including a felony count of interfering with police during a civil disorder. Arkansas Online has an article (archived links) detailing the investigation and the charges against him.

With ubiquitous cellphone cameras, the video of Hughes’ arrest quickly made it online (archived):

 

There is an important sentence in the above tweet/post from the Hodge Twins, and that is this:

“The feds called the manufacturer of his Liberty Gun Safe and got the passcode to get into it too.”

It comes as a surprise to many of us (although it shouldn’t) that an electronic keypad has a secret factory default passcode that allows entry into the safe besides the customer-configured passcode. We don’t know if this default passcode is unique to each safe, or if it’s a model default passcode (like a silly default “admin/admin” username/password combination you find in most wireless routers) that will get you entry into any Liberty Safe of the same model. (Looking at the customer FAQ’s on the Liberty Safe website, it looks like the default passcode may be unique to each safe.)

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Tree Euthanasia? Climate Alarmists Now Warn That Our Forests Will Worsen Global Warming

Back in the 1970s, when trees became almost a protected class, we heard that we had to ditch paper supermarket bags (and move to plastic) because we were decimating too many forests. Now, 50 years later, with more tree cover in the U.S. than a century ago, the greentopians have another complaint:

American forests will become CO2 emitters by 2070, they aver, joining 10 protected forests worldwide that already are net spewers of the gas.

Reflecting the complaints many misanthropic leftists have about people, the issue is that as trees age they become takers: Their growth slows and they use less CO2. In fact, the amount metabolized is lower than that produced by wildfires and dead-tree decomposition.

True to form, some scientists have suggested as a “remedy” what is already applied to people: euthanasia — with the arboreal version involving destroying senior-citizen trees and replacing them with young whippersnapper ones. Whether such a great replacement would involve foreign-tree imports was not revealed.

(Thankfully, U.S. Department of Agriculture experts dismiss this idea as being based on poor science.)

As for the tree-villain story, ScienceAlert informs:

An alarming report from the US Department of Agriculture predicts that by 2070, the nation’s forests will release substantially more carbon than they store.

Forests in the US – bar those in Alaska – will no longer absorb 150 million metric tons of carbon a year within five decades, experts say.

That carbon is equivalent to the emissions of roughly 40 coal power plants.

To understand how a carbon sink can become a carbon tap, we have to consider the lifecycle of a healthy forest, where new growth matures into old growth and old growth dies and makes room for new growth.

But today, in North America, not enough young trees are being planted and allowed to grow up.

This means that mature forests are outpacing young forests, which are also more likely to be harvested or killed due to climate effects like wildfires, drought, or storms.

The overall shift to an older age cohort of trees means that in the future, forests in the US could be dying more than they are growing.

Practically, this turns forests from carbon absorbers to carbon emitters.

Old growth trees hold the most carbon in total, but after reaching a certain size, their growth seems to slow. Young trees, on the other hand, rapidly take up carbon for growth.

My, not since Babes in Toyland have big old trees seemed so frightful. What’s really supposed to terrify us, though, is the big bad gaseous “threat” CO2. Yet this fear is as irrational as worrying about walking, talking trees.

The first suspicious thing about the climate-alarmist appeal is the terminology: Calling CO2 “carbon” is like calling H2O “hydrogen.” “Man, am I thirsty. I gotta get me a big glass of hydrogen.”

Then there’s, “The lawn’s lookin’ a bit brown. Tell Timmy to get the hose and hydrogen the grass.”

Yeah, it’s that ridiculous.

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New Data Says You Stopped Mass Murder Most of the Time

We live in a media driven culture. We also have government agencies putting out biased reports that serve their political masters. It is rare that the media even questions the agency reports. That wouldn’t matter, but many of us confuse media headlines with facts. I’ve seen people on Facebook say that there were hundreds of “mass shootings” this year and that our children are not safe in school any longer. They are wrong, and you stop mass-murder most of the time.

Please let me pose a different question.

If an ordinary citizen stops mass-murder and the mainstream media refuses to report it, did it really happen?

According to the FBI, the answer is almost always, “No!”

I am a data geek and I love to explore the deeper questions around public events. For example, how do we define “mass-murder”, and has that definition changed? How are the murderers stopped? It turns out that you get wildly different answers depending on subtle changes in the questions you ask.

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ATF’s proposed definition of “personal collection” of firearms is missing something

The ATF’s proposed rule expanding who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms is being lauded by anti-gun groups like Giffords, which says the rule “moves us closer to universal background checks than we’ve ever been,” while the National Shooting Sports Foundation is panning the new proposal as yet another example of executive branch overreach by the Biden administration.

Under the proposed rule, anyone that so much as attempts to sell a privately owned firearm for a profit could be deemed by the ATF to be an unlicensed firearms dealer, even if the sale doesn’t take place or no profit is gained. At the same time, the agency maintains gun owners won’t be deemed “engaged in the business” of selling firearms if they make only “occasional sales to enhance a personal collection, or for a hobby, or if the firearms they sell are all or part of a personal collection.”

While the ATF declined to define “occasional sales”, it has attempted to define the term “personal collection”, and I couldn’t help but laugh and roll my eyes when I saw it.

Personal collection, personal collection of firearms, or personal firearms collection.

(a) Personal firearms that a person accumulates for study, comparison, exhibition, or for a hobby (e.g., noncommercial, recreational activities for personal enjoyment, such as hunting, or skeet, target, or competition shooting). The term shall not include any firearm purchased for the purpose of resale or made with the predominant intent to earn a profit.

Notice anything missing from the reasons why someone would accumulate personal firearms? Yep, the ATF has ignored the single biggest reason why people purchase a gun: self-defense.

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Team Biden Continues Two-Pronged Assault on 2nd Amendment and Small Businesses

Happy Friday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Ertenzo felt most purposeful when adding a secret fourth bean to his three-bean salad for the annual Cornhole Club picnic.

The commie puppet masters who run Joe Biden’s brain have made no secret of their contempt for the Second Amendment and law-abiding American gun owners. They’ve had their senile mouthpiece babbling about “assault weapons” almost from the moment he was installed in the Oval Office.

Democrats don’t have a lot of luck with sweeping gun control legislation for a couple of reasons. First, they keep passing laws that make gun owners who have adhered to the law criminals overnight. These laws eventually find their way to a judge or a court that says, “Yeah…no.”

The other reason — and this is the big one — is that there are a lot of Democrats who own guns and are fond of their Second Amendment rights. Most of them are in flyover country, which is why a lot of the D.C. Dems are out of touch with reality.

Team Biden is nothing if not relentless in its pursuit of an anti-American agenda, however. Instead of the legislative process, the bureaucracy is being used to choke the life out of the Second Amendment, which Catherine wrote about yesterday:

The Biden administration, failing to get enough congressional cooperation to trample on the Second Amendment, continues its war against gun dealers.

Bingo.

As we examine the story further, it’s important to remember that Democrats have contempt for small business owners. People who can’t be forced into unionizing and stuffing the coffers of the Democratic Big Labor slush fund are useless to them.

Here’s more from Catherine’s post:

I previously wrote about how hundreds of gun dealers suddenly lost their licenses to Biden’s ATF, in what the gun industry says is a back-handed way of undermining gun rights  Some dealers informed the media that the federal government is hurting a major ally in identifying “suspicious gun buyers” by targeting legitimate gun dealers.

But the Biden administration is successfully hurting gun dealers’ business. “We were making $1 million a year, now it’s less than $100,000,” gun dealer Anthony Navarro told the Wall Street Journal. “This policy is designed to be a backdoor violation of the Second Amendment.” Now there’s the new ATF rule, also aimed at gun dealers.

I’m an Arizona resident. Rules regarding private gun sales are practically nonexistent. Both parties have to be Arizona residents and after that, YOLO. The Grand Canyon State has functioned with minimal gun laws for a very long time. My grandfather owned a gun store when I was a kid, so I know whence I speak (write). What the feds want to do now is get their fascist little fingers all over the transactions between individuals, which Ryan Petty explains at our sister site Bearing Arms:

The White House outlined that under the suggested guidelines, individuals would be expected to obtain a federal license and conduct background checks if they meet one or more of several conditions. These include frequently selling firearms shortly after purchasing them, offering guns in near-new condition, selling multiple units of the same gun model, or selling business inventory as a previously federally-licensed dealer without transferring it to a personal collection for at least one year, effectively targeting the so-called fire sale loophole. The proposed rules would establish criteria around the frequency and type of gun sales by unlicensed sellers, along with the condition of the firearms.

The Second Amendment infuriates leftists because the federal government hasn’t been able to wrest control of it from the states. It’s a perfect example of how the country is supposed to work. My good friend, colleague, and “Unwoke” podcast co-host Kevin Downey Jr. once asked me if all of my guns were legal. I replied, “In this state they are.” Were I to move back to California, the story would be different.

The anti-2A crowd is fond of saying, “We don’t want to take away your guns.”

They do, of course, but until they can, they’d like to make the legal acquisition of firearms so onerous that people just give up.

Federal Court Temporarily Halts ATF’s Labeling of Forced Reset Triggers as Machine Guns

The Northern District of Texas Federal Court has issued a temporary restraining order in favor of the National Association for Gun Rights in their legal battle against the ATF. This order will maintain the current situation in the case until either September 27, 2023, or until a decision is made on the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction.

The Association cited a precedent set by the 5th Circuit Court in the Cargill case, arguing that bump stocks should not be considered machine guns. Judge O’Connor concurred, suggesting that the Association has a strong likelihood of winning the case based on existing laws.

In a 2022 communication to federal firearms dealers, the ATF had classified ‘forced reset triggers’ (FRTs) as ‘firearms’ and ‘machine guns’ according to the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act.

Rare Breed Triggers initiated the sale of their Forced Reset Trigger in December 2020 after extensive legal review. However, by January 2021, the ATF had started campaigns to ban these triggers. Despite the ATF’s claim that public concerns initiated this action, Freedom of Information Act requests revealed no such concerns from the public had been recorded.

Dudley Brown, the President of the National Association for Gun Rights, commented that the restraining order represents progress in refuting the ATF’s questionable redefinition of ‘machine gun’ and aims to cease the agency’s overreach towards Rare Breed Triggers.

The lawsuit’s objective is to revoke the ATF’s prohibition on FRT triggers and safeguard the owners of these triggers from undue ATF intervention.

According to existing federal legislation, a ‘machine gun’ is a weapon capable of firing multiple rounds with a single trigger action. This longstanding definition, which the ATF is purportedly disregarding, makes it clear that Rare Breed Triggers’ FRT only enables the firing of one round per trigger action.

Hannah Hill, the Executive Director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights— the National Association for Gun Rights’ legal division—expressed optimism that the temporary restraining order is a positive indicator for a future preliminary injunction that would protect all their members.

Biden Administration Proposes Plan to Expand Who Needs a License to Sell Used Guns

President Joe Biden has announced a new proposal to expand the scope of federal gun dealing regulations to cover more people who sell used guns.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice submitted a new plan for determining who must obtain a federal firearms license to legally sell guns on the secondary market. The proposed rule would set limits on how frequently an unlicensed seller could offer up guns to customers, how often they can sell the same kind of gun, and what kind of condition the firearm has to be in before the seller would be required to get a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Anybody who violates the proposed regulations and sells a gun without a license could face up to $250,000 in fines and five years in federal prison or both.

“[U]nder the proposed rule, a person would be presumed to be required to become a licensed dealer and run background checks if they meet one or more of the following criteria,” the White House said in a release. “Offer for sale any number of firearms and also represents to potential buyers that they are willing and able to purchase and sell them additional firearms; Repetitively offer for sale firearms within 30 days after they were purchased; Repetitively offer for sale firearms that are like new in their original packaging; Repetitively offer for sale multiple firearms of the same make and model; or as a formerly federally-licensed firearms dealer, sell firearms that were in the business inventory and not transferred to a personal collection at least a year before the sale, addressing the so-called’ fire sale loophole.’”

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New Bill Would Stop VA Bureaucrats From Gaming The System To Grab Veterans’ Guns

A new bill from Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas would keep Biden administration bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from meddling with veterans’ Second Amendment right to buy and own guns.

The legislation, introduced on Friday by Reps. Roy, Eli Crane of Arizona, Lance Gooden of Texas, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Andy Harris of Maryland, and Mary Miller of Illinois, specifically bars the VA from sending veterans’ names to the Department of Justice to be added to the federal government’s no-gun list.

Currently, the VA forces any veterans who want to appoint a fiduciary to manage their benefits to risk losing their Second Amendment rights. The expressed purpose of the fiduciary program, according to the VA, is “to protect Veterans and beneficiaries who are unable to manage their VA benefits through the appointment and oversight of a fiduciary.”

At no time during the fiduciary evaluation process does the VA determine if a veteran is a danger to himself or others. Yet, any veteran who is deemed “unable to manage” their benefits on their own by the VA is automatically barred from purchasing or owning firearms or ammunition.

Their names are distributed to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which federal firearm dealers use to determine a person’s eligibility for a gun purchase. There, veterans with fiduciaries are placed in an “adjudicated mental defective” category that indefinitely neuters their Second Amendment rights.

FBI data from 2023 shows that nearly 98 percent of the names placed in the NICS “mental defective” category by federal agencies were handed over to the FBI by the VA.

“You may be fined and/or imprisoned if you knowingly violate this law,” the VA warns.

A memo released by House Veteran Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost notes that the decision to name a fiduciary and disarm veterans is often made by “VA general schedule employees, not a court or similar judicial authority.” There is an appeals process for veterans who want “relief of firearms prohibitions imposed by the law” but whether or not that relief is granted is once again determined by the VA.

The committee estimates that “hundreds of thousands of veterans and their family members have been denied their constitutional right to bear arms” based on the judgment of low-level bureaucrats.

“America’s heroes should never have to fear losing their God-given right to self-defense simply for seeking the care they have earned in the process of protecting our republic,” Roy told The Federalist. “Yet, instead of focusing on securing the border or defeating foreign enemies like China, Democrats are set to take aim at our veterans’ Second Amendment rights. I am proud to take a stand for our veterans with this legislation and to fight to prevent the Biden administration from infringing on their fundamental human rights to bear arms in self-defense.”