Category: Bureaucraps
Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, Inc. v. Garland
Document #60 District Court, D. North Dakota
BLUF
Guns firing both a cartridge and a shotgun shell are deemed non-NFA firearms. Franklin Armory made the Antithesis, a gun that shoots both .45 Long Colt and .410 shotgun shells. ATF said it was an SBR. FRAC sued and the court sided with them.
Colorado – The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has finalized a sweeping ban on dispersed recreational shooting – where forest visitors set up targets and practice shooting in an undesignated, undeveloped location – across 73% of the 1.1 million-acre Pike National Forest, a move that has drawn significant opposition from Second Amendment advocates.
The decision, part of the agency’s Integrated Management of Target Shooting Project, aims to address what officials call “unacceptable risks to public safety” as the forest sees increased use from hikers, cyclists, and off-roaders.
Under the new policy, over 800,000 acres will be off-limits to dispersed target shooting, while six designated shooting ranges will be developed with noise abatement features and safety measures. The closures will be implemented in phases, with areas near Rampart Range Road, previously subject to emergency orders, among the first to be restricted. The agency insists that the plan balances public safety, resource management, and recreational shooting opportunities.
“This decision marks the transition from one era of recreational shooting into the next,” said Douglas County Board of Commissioners Chair George Teal, who supports the ban.
The move has also been praised by the Southern Shooting Partnership, a coalition of government and utility agencies that have worked for years to address shooting-related conflicts in the region.
However, gun rights advocates argue that the ban is a clear violation of the Second Amendment.
The Mountain States Legal Foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms has filed an official objection, challenging the Forest Service’s authority to restrict firearms-related activities on such a massive scale.
“By restricting the people’s right to engage in dispersed target shooting within the Pike National Forest, the USFS is attempting to regulate arms-bearing conduct in violation of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the foundation’s objection states.
So, That’s Why We Know So Little About Trump’s Assassin
The observation was well-warranted: We know more about Luigi Mangione, the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer, than we do about Thomas Matthew Crooks, who tried to assassinate President Donald J. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July. Crooks was shot and killed during the attempt, but not after a slew of security breaches and all-around ineptitude from the Secret Service was exposed.
It was one of the few times where Democrats and Republicans found the Secret Service’s initial reasoning and demeanor after the attempt to be wholly unacceptable. Well, there seems to be a reason why Crooks has evaporated into the ether: the FBI is allegedly suppressing all information about the Trump assassin, which reportedly contains a possible lead on an accomplice.
Second Amendment Roundup: Supreme Court Should Hold its Decision in VanDerStok
The new Administration should notify the Court of its change in position on ATF regulations.
As of now, of the nine cases argued in the Supreme Court’s October calendar, five have been decided. Still pending is Garland v. VanDerStok, which was argued on October 8. Before rendering a decision, the Court should give the Trump Administration an opportunity to express its views of the case with the Court. It’s a challenge to the Final Rule of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) redefining and expanding the definitions of “firearm” and “firearm frame or receiver” that criminalizes conduct not made unlawful by Congress, with Second Amendment implications.
The new Administration is sure to hold views adverse to those presented by the Biden Administration. Indeed, the Plaintiffs’ arguments in the case are similar to those made by DOJ in defense of the previous, longstanding regulatory definition of “firearm” before the Biden Administration upended that definition in the Rule.
On February 7, the President issued the Executive Order Protecting Second Amendment Rights directing the Attorney General to examine all regulations and other actions of executive departments to assess any ongoing infringements on Second Amendment rights and to propose a plan of action to the President to protect those rights. That includes rules promulgated by ATF and the positions taken by the United States in ongoing litigation that could affect the ability of Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Prompted by the Executive Order, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) and 29 other U.S. Senators wrote to ATF Deputy Director Marvin Richardson requesting that ATF immediately rescind several regulations promulgated by the Biden Administration, including the “so-called ‘ghost gun’ rule, which cracks down on law-abiding hobbyists who are exercising their Second Amendment rights to privately build firearms—a longstanding tradition that traces back to the Colonial Era.” That’s the rule at issue here.
If the Supreme Court is on the verge of issuing an opinion in VanDerStok, it should delay to give Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris an opportunity to review the matter and advise the Court of the new Administration’s position. That office must be overwhelmed by the deluge of cases in which the district courts are enjoining actions of the President, such as the DOGE efforts to weed out fraud and abuse from the executive branch and the effort to exclude birth-right citizenship to unlawful aliens and temporary visitors.
The SG’s Office should act quickly to ensure that the Court is advised of the Administration’s views on VanDerStock. If it doesn’t make this a top priority, it risks a decision that is uninformed by the Executive Branch’s position on a constitutional right exercised by millions of Americans.
The Department of Justice has already taken steps to ask courts to put cases on hold to give counsel an opportunity to advise the courts on the government’s position consistent with the Executive Order. In Colon v. BATFE (11th Cir.), a challenge to ATF’s pistol brace regulation, DOJ filed a motion to postpone the oral argument scheduled for March 5 and to hold the appeal in abeyance. Similarly, in Kansas v. U.S. Attorney General (D. Kansas), involving ATF’s “engaged in the business rule,” the DOJ submitted a brief requesting that the Court stay the case, including all deadlines on pending motions, in light of the Executive Order.
In VanDerStok, the Department of Justice should promptly file a letter to notify the Court that the position of the United States has been reconsidered and that the government’s previously stated views no longer represent the United States’ position. It recently filed such a letter in United States v. Skrmetti, advising the Court that the new Administration would not have intervened to challenge Tennessee’s ban on gender-altering medical “experimentation” on minors. The letter did not seek further “likely duplicative briefing from the same parties about the same court of appeals judgment in the underlying suit.”
Here, it is unlikely that the Court would accept any further briefing from the United States, which in any event would likely duplicate the excellent briefing from the respondents and their amici. I commented on two of such amici briefs here and here (which I coauthored). Whatever alternative the Acting Solicitor General chooses, she should notify the Court quickly of the government’s change in position.
For a comprehensive review of the issue on the merits, see my article “The Meaning of ‘Firearm’ and ‘Frame or Receiver’ in the Federal Gun Control Act: ATF’s 2022 Final Rule in Light of Text, Precedent, and History.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts on Wednesday paused a federal judge’s order that required the Trump administration to pay around $2 billion in foreign aid funds to contractors by midnight.
The ruling comes after the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court for an emergency order to block the release of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding, which the federal judge had required by midnight. Officials had said they would not be able to comply with the judge’s order.
The Trump administration said U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali’s order had created “an untenable payment plan at odds with the President’s obligations under Article II to protect the integrity of the federal fisc and make appropriate judgements(sic) about foreign aid – clear forms of irreparable harm.”
Any response from the groups that are fighting the Trump administration is due before Friday at 12 p.m., meaning the pause could potentially be relatively short-lived.
The Trump administration said it was eliminating more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world, putting numbers on its plans to eliminate the majority of U.S. development and humanitarian help abroad.
One more goobermint disaster to lay right at the feet of the demoncraps
National Security NIGHTMARE: How Radical Trans Activists Hijacked America’s Spy Agencies
Everything you suspected might be going on in the Federal Government these past fours years is turning out to be true.
For instance, if you thought radical transgenderism was being pushed on agencies and employees to the detriment of the government’s core mission, it looks like you can take off the tin foil hat. One whistleblower says it’s all true, and it’s probably worse than you imagined.
RedState’s Bonchie reported earlier this week how the National Security Agency’s Intelink messaging program was used by federal employees to engage in debauched conversations about transgender fetishes and transitioning. From Bonchie:
While the mainstream press screams bloody murder over the Trump administration’s trimming back of the bureaucratic state, shocking new details have emerged about how government resources were being misused. A new report from City Journal has obtained chat logs showing NSA representatives, including from the CIA and FBI, used the NSA’s government interlink program to discuss various transgender fetishes and aspects of “transitioning.”…..
On Wednesday, Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and conservative commentator, pulled back the curtain even more by sharing what an NSA whistleblower revealed to him in an interview: “It’s going to get people killed in the field.” And that’s because, as Rufo noted in the interview prologue, the shenanigans at the NSA are high stakes: “The agency is responsible for overseeing America’s digital intelligence-gathering and is, in theory, a key part of our national security apparatus.” The stakes can’t get much higher than that.
The whistleblower explained that things started out on a small scale about a decade ago — a meeting here, a potluck there. Couched as “employee resource groups,” staffers were gathered to discuss things like racism, veterans issues and, of course, gay pride. Said the whistleblower: “Then it started to get more and more. Instead of just one day a month, it was one week a month, or the whole month.”
Things got really out of hand.
And then everything became Pride. You would go to a training, and it would be about “privilege” and “how to be a better ally.” A lady would give classes on how to talk “gender-neutral” to people.
You had analysts that didn’t want to do the reporting they were supposed to be doing because they were going to have to report on somebody’s “dead name.”
They were having this crisis of conscience about reporting the adversary’s actual name because they thought it was their “dead name,” and they didn’t want to disrespect the person. It was like a cult that was hellbent on pushing gender ideology.
When asked by Rufo about the role a “clique” of male-to-female transitioners played in spreading the trans propaganda throughout the agency, the whistleblower responded:
There is a very small number of them, but they wield an enormous amount of power. And outside of the sick stuff, you also see a prevalent Marxist philosophy going on with these people in their chat rooms. They hate capitalism. They hate Christians. They’re always espousing socialist and Marxist beliefs.
The new Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, oversees the NSA and has acted quickly to root out the radicals in the agency, giving a Friday deadline for identifying the participants in the smutty chats. They can all expect to get pink slips.
It’s a good start, but, as the whistleblower told Rufo, it won’t be easy to root them all out. “I wish I could say I see it playing out well, with them following the orders and doing it. But after the last four years, I just don’t know.”
Will Absorbing the ATF Into the FBI Rein in Each Agency’s Abuses?
The ATF, charged with regulating firearms, has a history of abuse and incompetence.
By appointing FBI Director Kash Patel as acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), President Donald Trump took a step towards reining in a federal agency justifiably viewed by many as a threat to self-defense rights. He also signaled that he may consolidate government bodies that overlap in their responsibilities. Fans of big government and opponents of privately owned firearms won’t like the move, but the idea of combining the agencies is hardly unprecedented. After all, President Bill Clinton had the same idea three decades ago.
Patel Wears Two Hats
“ATF welcomes Acting Director Kash Patel to ATF, who was sworn in and had his first visit to ATF Headquarters in Washington, D.C. today,” the ATF posted on X on February 24. “We are enthusiastic to work together for a safer America!”
Patel takes over from Steven Dettelbach, who resigned just before Trump took office. Dettelbach presided over an ATF seen as even more hostile to gun owners than has historically been the case.
CNN: Deep State Bureaucrats Threaten To Sell State Secrets If Trump Isn’t Nice To Them
CNN warns that intelligence employees who get the axe are valuable — and that those same employees will sell national secrets if fired. Which is it?
Brace yourself as the propaganda press tries to stop President Donald Trump from culling corruption from the deep state. Expect “news” stories screaming about ordinary budget and staff cuts that would happen in any bloated private business but under Trump will be described as unfair or even dangerous.
Take, for example, the Feb. 24 number from CNN, “How Trump’s government-cutting moves risk exposing the CIA’s secrets.” The short report required four CNN writers, Katie Bo Lillis (who was involved in a story that led to a defamation trial in which a jury found that CNN was literally fake news), Phil Mattingly, Natasha Bertrand, and Zachary Cohen.
Exposing CIA secrets? That sounds pretty dangerous. Just how much danger are we in?
In the piece, CNN warned, “As the CIA weighs staff cuts, current and former intelligence officials say that mass firings could offer a rich recruitment opportunity for foreign intelligence services — like China or Russia — who may seek to exploit financially vulnerable or resentful former employees.”
The piece goes on.
“… on the CIA’s 7th floor — home to top leadership — some officers are also quietly discussing how mass firings and the buyouts already offered to staff risk creating a group of disgruntled former employees who might be motivated to take what they know to a foreign intelligence service.” (So “quietly,” apparently, that CNN could hear them, as Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway pointed out.)
Is that a threat from the CIA? Is CNN reporting that Trump should keep everyone employed because, if he doesn’t, former CIA agents will spill U.S. secrets to our enemies? Apparently so.
But if that’s the case, these are exactly the employees who should be fired. Those with too little integrity to exit with grace should not be employed in jobs with access to sensitive information. The CIA employees CNN describes should not be trusted with any more secrets.
Within the same piece, CNN ridiculously makes it sound as if valued, model intelligence employees will get the axe — and that those same employees have loose lips and are ripe for the picking. Which is it, CNN?
The media want you to be worried because they are worried. If Trump cleans house, it will destroy their business model. CNN and other propagandists have exploited unethical leaking of deep state sources, treating their whispers as gospel, and amplifying their aims through high-profile “news” stories.
If Trump fires their sources, it will be harder for the media to collude with the intelligence community to craft propaganda to sell to the public. The connection between CNN and the deep state has been too cozy for too long.
What Kash Patel Should Do As Acting ATF Director
I spent the weekend with a number of Second Amendment advocates, including some names you’ll probably recognize. That’s where I first heard that Kash Patel, in addition to being director of the FBI, was named to helm the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He wasn’t who I thought would get tapped, but the general consensus was that this was a good thing.
And I agree.
But now that Patel is in charge, what is on the agenda?
He started at the FBI by getting rid of some of the dead weight in that agency as well as some who used their positions to push their own agendas. Now, he’s got a chance to do that again.
With Kash Patel now in the position of Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the agency is in for a shake-up.
One thing that Patel can do is get rid of problem employees who have gone out of their way to infringe on the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms. This purge has already started with the firing of the ATF’s Chief Council, Pam Hicks. Hicks was a rabid anti-gun attorney that chose to defend very constitutionally dubious rules. Although Hicks was a good first step, without removing other problem members, nothing will change.
The first person that Patel should remove from the Bureau is the ATF’s Deputy Director, Marvin Richardson. Mr. Richardson has been behind some of the ATF’s most controversial rules. He was the driving force behind the reclassification of pistols equipped with braces. Mr. Richardson proposed reclassifying pistols with braces and unfinished firearms frames during a 2020 meeting with the Biden transition team without President Trump’s knowledge….
Mr. Patel should look at Matthew Varisco. Mr. Varisco is the ATF Assistant Director for the Office of Field Operations. When he worked out of the Philadelphia Field Office, he pushed the targeting of companies selling firearms precursor parts, including issuing a cease-and-desist letter to JSD Supply. This action was taken before the rule change of pistol frames. He pioneered the idea of firearms “structuring.” According to Varisco, if someone buys firearms parts from multiple companies to build a working firearm, that is “structuring.” This use of the term was the first time it was used outside banking crimes. He claimed that the possibility of “structuring” meant that all 80% firearm frames needed to be treated like completed guns. Mr. Varisco’s idea of “structuring” made it into the final rule.
Other names are, of course, mentioned, and I happen to agree. Far too many people achieved success in the ATF by supporting gun control, which would expand the agency’s authority by virtue of trampling on the rights of the American people and by reinterpreting rules as much as possible to expand it.
And a lot of names went into that.
However, there’s a lot more to be done than just clean house. Patel needs to also purge the ATF of some of the problematic interpretations of federal law, and do so in the way Brandon Herrera talked about in a video regarding what he would do as ATF director. No, the AK Guy isn’t calling the shots at the ATF, but Herrera says he came up with this after close consultation with groups like the Firearms Policy Coalition and Gun Owners of America and they happen to be smart ideas.
Whether the end goal is to merge the ATF with the FBI and get rid of the agency entirely or not, the truth is that we have a golden opportunity to preserve gun rights for the next generation. Kash Patel strikes me as the kind of guy who would be interested in doing it just this way, too, so I’m incredibly hopeful going forward.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump’s appointment of Kash Patel (and Dan Bongino at the FBI), we’ve got the opportunity to make the FBI great again and bring the ATF to heel. The two-tiered system of justice that we’ve seen from the Biden administration is a thing of the past and the bureau is on its way back to being America’s premiere law enforcement agency.
BLUF: (YAY!)
The departure of Hicks was bemoaned by anti-gun activist groups such as Brady who characterized the sacking as “chilling.”
30 Senators Tell ATF to Get With Trump 2A Agenda as Agency’s Top Lawyer Canned
A group of 30 Republican lawmakers on Thursday “strongly encouraged” the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to begin scrapping Biden-era anti-gun rules.
In a five-page letter to ATF Deputy Director Marvin G. Richardson— who has been leading the agency since the recent departure of the bureau’s avowedly anti-gun Director Steve Dettelbach– the senators urged the regulator to align its policies with “President Trump’s Second Amendment priorities” as laid out in his recent Executive Order.
Specifically, the letter calls on ATF officials to work with Attorney General Pam Bondi to quickly identify and rescind policies that allow “unlawful firearms regulations” to include the agency’s “Engaged in the Business,” “Pistol Brace,” and “Ghost Gun” rules as well as its “Zero Tolerance” policy under which ATF has revoked the licenses of FFLs over minor bookkeeping violations.
The senators said, “We urge you to immediately align ATF’s rules and policies with the President’s strong support for the Second Amendment.”
Further, the GOP lawmakers took aim at the agency’s huge cache of decades-old gun dealer records, urging ATF to destroy the reportedly hundreds of millions of ATF Form 4473 firearm transaction forms and allow FFLs to also destroy such records over 20 years old. The Biden administration had issued a rule that such records had to be maintained forever, creating what many argue is the foundation of a backdoor gun registry.
🚨BREAKING🚨
ATF’s Chief Counsel Pamela Hicks has been fired and escorted out of the Washington, D.C. headquarters.
Hicks oversaw the enforcement of every Biden infringement of the Second Amendment since taking the position in 2021. pic.twitter.com/Cvg8HN2gvP
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) February 20, 2025
Franklin Armory and FRAC Defeat ATF, Judge Rules Words Mean Things.
The U.S. District Court in North Dakota today issued its opinion in the Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition (“FRAC”)-Franklin Armory firearms classification-related lawsuit against ATF. In his ruling, Judge Daniel M. Traynor vacated the ATF’s prior misclassifications of Franklin Armory’s Reformation and Antithesis firearms. Judge Traynor’s ruling solidifies what the firearms industry has known for years—that the ATF has been abusing its firearms technology classification powers.
Per the Court’s opinion:
Franklin Armory presented a square peg, and ATF shoved it into a round hole. If Congress wanted “shotgun” to be a catch-all category for anything that doesn’t fit “rifle,” it could have done so. . . . . It is not for ATF to redefine the terms because it thinks Congress didn’t intend a certain outcome. Therefore, ATF exceeded its authority in defining “smoothbore” as anything lacking “functional rifling.”
FRAC and Franklin Armory are reviewing the Court’s ruling and seeking further guidance from legal counsel as to the future of both Reformation and Antithesis under the law. Judge Traynor’s opinion declares that the “ATF classification of the Antithesis and reclassification of the Reformation [are] VACATED.” In response to ATF’s arguments, Judge Traynor retorted that “Administrative agencies need to remember they are in the executive branch and leave legislating to Congress.”
FRAC President & CEO, Travis White, stated that “the ATF has egregiously abused the firearms technology classification process, and this is a landmark ruling in reining in such abuses.”
Franklin Armory President Jay Jacobson said, “we spent years trying to reason with ATF leadership as they failed to classify firearms correctly. We hope that future agency leaders will stick to the law as passed by Congress. All we ever wanted was a good referee, not someone to throw the game.”
Judge Traynor’s summary judgment ruling in FRAC v. Garland, No. 1:23-cv-00003, can be found here.
JUST IN: Woman has meltdown because Trump shut down her job where she studied "how to safely collect s*xual orientation and gender identity" practices.
Lmao. You literally can't tell what's a parody anymore.
"I was told to stop work immediately and that no more research… pic.twitter.com/fdOBSHMEP2
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 19, 2025
Let’s Understand What Maryland, Baltimore’s Lawsuit Against Glock is Really About
Glocks are among the most popular handguns in the country. They’re priced decently, run reliably, and just plain work. Police trust them as do numerous armed citizens. They’re everywhere.
And that bothers a lot of people. Now, though, Glock is being sued by the city of Baltimore and the State of Maryland, with the help of Everytown for Gun Safety, and let’s talk a bit about what’s really going on here.
First, let’s get into the official word.
In an attempt to keep fully automatic guns off the streets, Baltimore and Maryland authorities Wednesday sued Glock, the maker of some of the best-selling handguns in America. The lawsuit demands Glock take steps to prevent its guns from being modified into machine-gun-like weapons capable of firing 120 rounds in one minute.
Small, easily installed devices known as “auto sears” or “switches” that are growing more common have terrified law enforcement because they enable high-powered violence not seen since 1934, when Congress banned machine guns after their prominent use by mobsters.
But police statistics show the number of “modified Glock” shootings is on the rise, including an incident near a Baltimore YMCA in March in which a woman’s car was hit 18 times, and police found 41 shell casings nearby. In Philadelphia last year, eight high school students were shot in one spray, including a 16-year-old who was hit nine times. In Memphis in April, a police officer was killed and two other officers wounded in a firefight with two teenagers, one armed with a modified gun.
The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court, is the first to test Maryland’s new Gun Industry Accountability Act, passed by the General Assembly last year to create liability for gun manufacturers and possibly circumvent an earlier related law. The Maryland lawsuit mirrors others filed in Chicago, Minnesota and New Jersey in recent months.
But here’s the problem: Glock doesn’t make the switches. They didn’t design them. They didn’t have anything to do with them.
Further, they’re illegal to make or possess–at least if you’re not one of the handful that has a transferable switch that was made before 1986 and is registered with the ATF. People are getting them left and right, but they’re not doing it lawfully.
What at least some are claiming is that Glock hasn’t redesigned its reliable handgun so it can’t accept a switch.
Yet they don’t punish Toyota because someone might modify one of their cars and circumvent emissions controls or something. Why would they?
But this isn’t really about full-auto switches or even Glock.
No, this is about making it as expensive as possible to be in the firearm industry and to offer products to the civilian market. Right now, this is the angle of attack they’re taking, but it will not end there.
The federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was created specifically to stop these kinds of nuisance lawsuits aimed at the gun industry, particularly when they’re being attacked for the actions of a third party. That’s what’s happening here. They’re trying to pretend it’s Glock’s fault and to get them to stop selling their guns in Maryland, but does anyone really think that would do any good?
It’s not like the people putting switches on their guns are going to suddenly decide they don’t want Glocks because they’re not sold there.
They’ll just get them from somewhere else.
But if enough states do it and enough companies get sued, they’ll either go out of business or just stop selling to private citizens.
You don’t need to control guns if there are no guns for anyone to buy, after all. That’s what this is really about. That’s the long game at work with anti-gunners, and they’re using anti-gun states to try and do it.
Make no mistake. Glock has done nothing wrong.
These two governments just don’t like the right to keep and bear arms.
Documents filed in an ongoing prosecution for illegal possession of a short-barreled rifle are raising new concerns about ATF’s enforcement policy concerning pistols with attached stabilizing braces. The government’s assertions of authority are truly breathtaking, claiming they can use the terms of an invalid rule to interpret the underlying statute and enforce it against U.S. citizens in felony prosecutions.
We have been reporting on the saga of ATF’s ill-fated 2023 administrative edict, Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached “Stabilizing Braces,” ever since the rule was proposed. The final version of that regulation reversed more than a decade of prior statements by ATF that attaching a stabilizing brace to a pistol did not create a short-barreled rifle (SBR) regulated under the National Firearms Act. Instead, ATF would use a series of vague and open-ended criteria to determine if the braced pistol was intended to be fired from the shoulder. But the rule provided no guidance to owners of such pistols how the criteria would be applied. Instead, ATF essentially claimed, “We’ll know an SBR when we see it.”
The pistol brace rule drew numerous legal challenges – including by the NRA – and several different courts found it defective on various grounds. A series of injunctions against its enforcement issued until, on June 13, 2024, a federal judge in Texas vacated the rule altogether. Owners of braced pistols breathed a sigh of relief as the threat of felony prosecution seemingly abated.
Last month, however, we reported on an alarming email to a gun owner sent by ATF’s Firearm Industry Programs Branch. The owner had asked ATF if attaching a stabilizing brace to a CZ Scorpion pistol would turn it into an SBR subject to the NFA. FIPB’s reply stated: “Federal law requires a pistol with an attached stabilizing brace or stock be registered as a short barreled rifle (SBR).”
The FIPB response also acknowledged that enforcement of ATF’s pistol brace rule was enjoined, and asserted, “While the appeal is pending, ATF is complying with the Court’s order.”
Yet ATF’s idea of “compliance,” according to the email, was to assert an even broader authority to treat ALL braced pistols as SBRs (not just ones fulfilling the “factoring criteria” specified in its rule), based on the agency’s reading of the underlying statutes.
After our reporting on that email, ATF quickly issued another statement, walking back the categorical statement about braced pistols. “ATF agrees that the statement ‘Federal law requires a pistol with an attached stabilizing brace or stock be registered as a short barreled rifle (SBR)’ is overbroad.” But the follow-up also continued to assert that ATF remained responsible for enforcing the underlying statutes.
“A firearm designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder that meets the statutory definition of a short-barreled rifle contained in the NFA must be made and transferred in accordance with the requirements of the NFA,” it stated. It did not, however, elaborate on how the agency would make this determination with respect to braced pistols or how owners of such guns might know whether ATF considers their firearms SBRs subject to the NFA.
Last week, however, NRA was made aware of a pending prosecution for illegal possession of a short-barreled rifle that answers this question in a shocking way. Documents the government filed in that case acknowledge ATF’s enforcement of the underlying statute continues to be informed by the terms of the agency’s illegal rule. The case is U.S. v. Taranto in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Scott Jennings Baits CNN Analyst Into Making a Damning Admission
Scott Jennings, aka the voice of reason on CNN, managed to extract a damning admission from one of the network’s analysts on Tuesday night. Appearing at a roundtable during Abby Phillip’s show, the conservative commentator faced off against former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman.
What was said by the latter was stunning, not insofar as it is a revelation (we already know what Democrats think of American voters) but that someone would be brazen enough to say it out loud. Here’s how Jennings set things up.
JENNINGS: Here’s what I think is a joke, that you have these partisan hack Democrat attorney generals, they get together, and the only thing they know how to do is try to nullify the results of the last election by venue-shopping these district court judges. They find the most lunatic liberals they can. They file lawsuits knowing full well they’re going to try to usurp the president’s authority, tie this up in court for years…
Akerman then responded by describing the bureaucratic state as “sacrosanct.”
AKERMAN: That stuff is sacrosanct, and you’ve got people going in there who don’t know anything about…(crosstalk)…Elon Musk doing this, he knows nothing about it.
The word “sacrosanct” means something is too important to be interfered with. In other words, a former government hanger-on believes that bureaucracies are simply above being controlled and reformed by pesky elected officials. They are, in effect, an untouchable fourth branch of government.
It only got worse from there because Akerman then said the following.
JENNINGS: What you just said is so profound. You said these people don’t know anything and they don’t know what they’re doing.
AKERMAN: That’s right. I’m talking about Elon Musk.
JENNINGS: I understand, but they are appointees of the duly elected president so your view, you’re here as our legal expert, but your view is because you don’t personally believe they know enough, that the duly-elected president who appointed a treasury secretary and who appoints special appointees like Elon Musk shouldn’t be able to act as the president because you don’t personally believe they know enough? Is that how it works? Do elections mean anything to you?
AKERMAN: It’s got nothing to do with elections.
That last line is the money quote that perfectly illustrates the left wing of democratic governance. While they love to toss around the word “democracy” while pretending they are defenders of it, they do not believe in representative government. What they believe in is an unaccountable bureaucratic system that allows them to thumb their noses at American voters. It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” setup, and it has been the basis of Democratic Party power stretching back to the Woodrow Wilson era.
Akerman and those like him truly think their grip on power has “nothing to do with elections.” They want to be able to dictate their policy wants regardless of who wins. It is a tyrannical mindset wrapped up in a high-minded facade. It’s also abject nonsense in a technical sense. How efficient has the government been while being run by those Akerman would call qualified? How effective has it been at managing your taxpayer money? Meaningless credentialism is how the nation ended up with a nightmarish bureaucratic system that wouldn’t last five minutes in the private sector without major reforms or outright dismissal.
Democrats can continue their lawfare games if they’d like (and they’ll eventually lose), but all it’s doing is postponing the inevitable while continuing to turn Americans against them.
Ending the ATF Not So Fringe an Idea Anymore
There are a lot of people who want to end the ATF, but for a long time, all of them were gun rights advocates who had seen how the bureau abused its authority. For most Americans, it was just another federal law enforcement agency trying to do the right thing and catch criminals.
They had it in their heads that what happened in Ruby Ridge and in Waco were really just the result of lawless behavior rather than law enforcement screwing the pooch royally.
But as time marches on, things change.
Now, you can talk about ending the ATF and it’s not nearly as fringe of an idea as it once was. In fact, now it’s a fairly normal idea in politics.
The 119th Congress providesgun owners a unique chance to go on offense and advance pro-gun legislation. Donald Trump’s victory in November, coupled with Republicans’ retaking of the Senate and their continued control of the House, puts gun owners in a good position to get on the legislative scorecard, at least on paper.
On Jan. 7, 2025, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) took the initiative byintroducingH.R. 221, the “Abolish the ATF Act’’, a succinct, one-page bill that aims to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE). Burlison’s bill already has 27 co-sponsors, with Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ).
In a statement to The National News Desk earlier in January, Burlisondeclared, “The ATF is emblematic of the deep-state bureaucracy that believes it can infringe on constitutional liberties without consequence. If this agency cannot uphold its duty to serve the people within the framework of the Constitution, it has no place in our government.”
Burlison previouslyindicatedthat state governments should handle firearms issues without having the Feds butt in. He accused the ATF of “co-opting or commandeering [local] law enforcement to enforce laws” which elected officials in state legislation did not pass. The congressman suggested that states should be allowed to handle matters themselves, without federal interference.
Burlison’s bill is just the latest in congressional attempts to rein in the ATF’s power. Since the ATF’s infamous Waco siege of 1993, where nearly80 peoplewere killed, gun owners’ attitudes towards the ATF have hardened to the point where several elected officials have stepped up to introduce their respective ATF abolition bills. Members of Congress such Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene(R-GA) Rep. Matt Gaetz(R-FL) have introduced their respective ATF abolition bills over the last decade.
And With That Receipt, We Learn That USAID Paid for a Terrorist’s College Tuition
You cannot make this stuff up? USAID, which blessedly is no more, paid for a radical Islamic terrorist’s college tuition. Past receipts show that the former agency footed the bill for Anwar Awlaki’s higher education. Awlaki lied about the country of his birth to obtain funds for college through the State Department. Awlaki later became the point of the lance for al-Qaeda’s digital jihad arm. Investigative Catherine Herridge has more:
Looks like USAID supported college tuition for Anwar Aulaqi (Awlaki) who later became a high level al Qaeda terrorist. Aulaqi falsely claimed he was born in Yemen to secure the financial help via the State Dept. when he was actually a US citizen, born in Las Cruces New Mexico.
Aulaqi would later develop close ties with several 9/11 hijackers and attain leadership status in AQ’s Yemen affiliate. Aulaqi was the godfather of the digital jihad that leveraged his writings and the web to radicalize Americans to AQ’s cause. Aulaqi became the first American targeted for death by the CIA.
In 2011, he was killed in a US drone strike.
And yet, some media figures claim they cannot find any waste or abuse at USAID.
Yeah, again, the legacy media is a joke.