Category: Bureaucraps

Second Amendment Roundup: Textualism and ATF’s Redefinition of “Firearm”
The statutory history of the Gun Control Act cuts in favor of the VanDerStok respondents.

This is my second installment preceding the upcoming October 8 argument in Garland v. VanDerStok, a challenge to the regulatory redefinition of the term “firearm” in the Gun Control Act.  By expanding the statutory definition, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) in its 2022 Final Rule purports to criminalize numerous innocent acts that Congress never made illegal.

Until the new rule, a kit with partially-machined raw material that can be fabricated into a firearm was not considered to have reached a stage that it is a “firearm.”  To prevent Americans from making their own firearms from such material, which has always been and remains lawful, the bugbear term “ghost guns” was recently coined.  In its VanDerStok brief, the government argues that “anyone with basic tools and rudimentary skills” can “assemble a fully functional firearm” from such kits “in as little as twenty minutes.”

As explained in my last post, that is refuted by none other than the former Acting Chief of ATF’s Firearm Technology Branch, Rick Vasquez, who reviewed and approved hundreds of classifications about whether certain items are “firearms.”  As he explained in his amicus brief, fabrication of a firearm from these kits is a complex process requiring skill and special tools beyond the capacity of the average person.

In this post I’ll trace the statutory history of the term “firearm” to gain insight into its meaning.  The Gun Control Act defines “firearm” as “(A) any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive; (B) the frame or receiver of any such weapon….”  18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(3).  An ATF regulation on the books from 1968 to 2022 defined a “frame or receiver” as “that part of a firearm which provides housing for the hammer, bolt or breechblock and firing mechanism,” i.e., the main part of a firearm to which the barrel and stock attach.

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Second Amendment Roundup: VanDerStok Tests Limits of Yet Another ATF Rule
The Supreme Court is set to decide whether the agency may expand criminal liability under the Gun Control Act.

On October 8, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Garland v. VanDerStok, a challenge to the Final Rule of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) from 2022 redefining and drastically expanding the meaning of the terms “firearm” and “firearm frame or receiver.”  This is the first of several posts in which I’d like to highlight some of the enlightening amici curiae briefs that have been filed in support of the respondents who challenged the rule.

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Perfect Biden-HARRIS Metaphor: Only Navy Oiler in ME Runs Aground, Springs Leaks.

If there ever was a need for a poster child for the neglect and indifference that characterizes the Biden-HARRIS administration’s attitude towards governance, someone now could easily slap up a picture of the USNS Big Horn.

The ship’s sad story has all the elements that are now bedeviling the Americans it serves thanks to the malevolent, arrogant, indifferent clowns who currently rule over us.

Almost a year ago, I wrote something I headlined, “US Maritime Woes: God Forbid We Go to War.” I was trying to shine a light on the utterly shameful, almost downright criminal neglect with which the Biden-HARRIS administration had treated our US Merchant Marine Fleet. It operates under the auspices of the US Maritime Administration (MARAD), which belongs to the Department of Transportation (aka Mayor Pete) – perhaps you’re already beginning to sense part of the problem if you don’t remember or haven’t read the column.

The administration has an “admiral” named as head of MARAD, one RADM Ann Phillips, who has performed exactly as damn near any other Biden cabinet secretary, particularly Mayor Pete – they haven’t seen her.

…Maritime matters were a priority during the GHW Bush years, but really got revved up during Trump’s term.

…During President Trump’s administration, Maritime Administrator Commandant Mark Buzby instigated a tidal wave of change. He allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for training ships, activated the entire ready reserve fleet in significant naval Turbo Activations, personally handled media inquiries, engaged with sailors nationwide, and attended major events as a headline speaker.

Biden’s current administrator, in contrast, has been so little engaged, she’s earned her own call-sign, and it’s not a compliment – “…who some call the Ghost Admiral.”

She’s still in the post.

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Biden-Harris Admin. Releases ‘One Year Report’ on Gun Violence Prevention Office

The White House on Monday released a one-year progress report on the activities of the Biden-Harris administration’s highly-touted Office of Gun Violence Prevention (OGVP), and predictably the report claims, “Lives are being saved, but there is still so much more to do.”

“At the direction of President Biden and Vice President Harris, the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and the entire Biden-Harris Administration will continue to do the work of reducing gun violence and supporting survivors every day,” the report states.

The report may be read here.

Among the accomplishments listed are:

  • Expanding Gun Background Checks and Making Clear the Gun Show Loophole Does Not Exist
  • Enhancing Gun Background Checks for Individuals Under Age 21
  • Enforcing Gun Trafficking and Straw Purchasing Laws
  • Keeping Guns Out of the Hands of Abusive Dating Partners
  • Implementing State Red Flag Laws
  • Establishing the Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center
  • Identifying Stolen Guns
  • Investing in Youth Mental Health
  • Investing in Safer Communities

There does not appear to be anything specifically aimed at arresting and prosecuting criminals who commit the crimes, except for this: “The Department has now charged more than 600 defendants using BSCA’s new gun trafficking and straw purchasing laws. In November 2023, the U.S. Sentencing Commission finalized new sentencing guidelines that responded to the directive in BSCA (Bipartisan Safer Communities Act) to increase certain firearms penalties for straw purchasing, trafficking in firearms, and organized crime affiliation, and consider a decrease to account for straw purchasers with mitigating circumstances (e.g., any domestic violence survivor history).”

The report further notes the Biden-Harris administration has helped states and cities “establish and strengthen their own Offices of Violence Prevention.” This past May, the White House hosted a gathering of more than 80 leaders from city and local offices of violence prevention in over 50 cities, the report says.

There is also mention of the administration’s effort to assist state lawmakers in their effort to advance legislation to combat gun violence. This translates to pushing more gun control at the state level.

“At least 17 states have enacted new legislation, including a safe storage law in California, a gun dealer accountability law in Washington, a victims compensation law in Maryland, a ghost gun ban in Vermont, a background check expansion in Maine, and a permit to purchase law in Delaware,” the report states.

The report gives a strong indication of what Harris will do if she wins in November. Essentially the brakes will be off and the concern is that the effort, and maybe the authority, of the OGVP will expand.

You’d think they’d wait until after the election.
Two way to take this
1 They’re so confident Harris is going to win that they’re arrogant
2 Biden is -again- stabbing Harris in the back for getting dumped.

President Biden plans to sign new executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence
The White House will announce the new measures in the coming weeks, as officials mark the first anniversary of the creation of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention

The White House will soon announce new executive actions aimed at further reducing gun violence in America, Scripps News has learned, just as the one-year mark since the formation of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention approaches.

Senior administration officials have pointed to the creation of the first-of-its-kind office, led by Vice President Kamala Harris, as a landmark moment for President Joe Biden, for whom the issue of gun violence has been a decades-long focus.

“We know that people are still dying every day in this country due to gun violence,” Stefanie Feldman, director of OGVP, told Scripps News in an interview Friday. “Sometimes it makes national headlines. Sometimes it doesn’t. President Biden and Vice President Harris are committed to continuing their long legacy of leadership on this work.”

Feldman said the new executive actions will be announced “in the weeks ahead” but declined to elaborate on specifics, noting only that some pertain to the continued implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act while others are “wholly new.”

“[Biden and Harris] really asked us to address all angles of this issue, to address not only mass shootings but suicide by firearm, accidental shootings [and] community violence,” Feldman noted.

This week the White House also released a new report showcasing the work of the OGVP in its first year, organized by the four key responsibilities of the office, including implementing the Safer Communities Act, coordinating support for gun violence survivors, identifying possible executive actions to be taken and expanding partner coalitions with states and localities throughout the country.

Passed in 2022 on a bipartisan basis, the Safer Communities Act was the first gun control law approved by Congress in nearly three decades and included additional funding for mental health and red flag programs, expanded background checks for gun sales and cracked down on illegal trafficking efforts.

In 2024, the gun background check system helped block more than 4,600 gun sales to people convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence, according to the report. To date, the Department of Justice has charged more than 500 defendants with violating provisions under the law, and the expanded background check provision has kept guns out of the hands of nearly 900 young people who shouldn’t have them, federal officials said.

On the implementation front, Feldman argued that, though the entirety of the legislation is already in effect, “there’s a big difference between implementing something and really squeezing out all the possible benefits that you can.”

She pointed to some state laws that protect individual privacy as obstacles preventing law enforcement officials from adequately responding to background checks, and said her office was currently working with state legislators to push for changes that would lift such restrictions.

The office has also worked to coordinate with state and local partners, including suggesting legislative changes at the state level. At least 17 states have passed new gun-related legislation over the past year and three — Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Mexico — formed their own offices, the report noted.

As for supporting survivors of gun violence and coordinating with partner coalitions, the organizer of one such group praised the work of OGVP in an interview with Scripps News.

Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was killed in the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida – the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history – now serves as president of “Stand with Parkland,” a group advocating for gun and public safety reform. Montalto said his group met with the OGVP “two or three times” since the office was stood up a year ago.

RELATED STORY | Gun violence in the US: How will the candidates handle a top issue for voters?

“We’re very pleased at the pragmatic approach that they’re taking in terms of increasing the ability to prevent gun violence in our country,” Montalto said. “These officials came down and walked through the halls of the scene of the Parkland shooting with our families. The Vice President was there with officials from the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and they sat down and they spoke with all the families that were available that day, listening to what we can do, talking about policies, procedures and additional laws that will help make everyone in this country safer from the threat of gun violence.”

Data from the Gun Violence Archive indicates that the number of mass shootings this year has decreased by 20 percent compared to the same period last year, the White House report noted, and is on track to be at the lowest level since 2019. Violent crime overall was down significantly as well, something the White House has touted as historic.

“After the prior administration saw a historic increase in homicides, this administration has seen a historic decrease in homicides, and that has only accelerated this year,” Feldman said.

In an election year, the Harris campaign has frequently highlighted the issue of gun violence on the campaign trail, contrasting her administration’s approach with how former President Donald Trump has handled the issue.

“I’m in favor of the second amendment. And I’m in favor of assault weapons bans. Universal background checks, red flag laws. And these are just common sense,” Harris said during a campaign event on Thursday, echoing a sentiment she shared when announcing the creation of the OGVP a year ago.

RELATED STORY | Surgeon general declares gun violence a public health crisis in America

But, with about four months left in office, Biden administration officials are working to take advantage of the remaining time while preparing for the next administration.

“What any president does with the structure of the White House or the Office is up to them, but what we’re focused on is what we can do in the next four months,” Feldman said. “President Biden, Vice President Harris, have the next four months to do all they can to save lives, and that’s exactly what they’ve asked the office to carry out.”

Montalto said he hoped that the work of OGVP would continue regardless of who wins in November.

“We do hope that this office survives any change in the White House, and that whoever gets elected as our next president realizes the value of having a pragmatic and practical group working towards the prevention of gun violence for all U.S. citizens,” he said

President Trump needs Tier One military protection
Delta, DEVGRU (Seal Team -6) operators far superior to Secret Service.

President Donald J. Trump and the entire country have been lucky — twice — but the problem with relying upon luck as an executive protection strategy is that luck can eventually run out.

The United States Secret Service had their chance to protect our 45th and possibly 47th President. They failed miserably, two times, and a good man was murdered and three people — including the former president — were wounded because of their ineptitude.

Rather than ordering immediate firings, all the Secret Service offered an angry public was excuses. President Trump’s protective detail was “redlined” they claimed, suffering from too much overtime. As a result, a handful of unfit and inexperienced DHS agents were seconded to the President’s protective detail, but only after watching a two-hour webinar. One of the DHS agents couldn’t even holster her Glock.

While senior FBI and Secret Service officials dither, dodge and dick around over who is to blame, President Trump remains protected mostly by sheer luck and a lot of prayers.

This. Must. Change.

Trump’s sleepy Secret Service detail should be fired and quickly replaced by blue and green guys from JSOC’s Special Mission Units.

Delta and DEVGRU Tier One operators are infinitely superior to the poorly trained clock-watchers in the Secret Service. They’re faster, fitter and far more professional. They shoot with surgical precision and operate regularly on a zero-fail mission basis — a standard to which the Secret Service can only claim to aspire.

Key to our operators’ success is their training, which includes executive protection and just about everything else, and they don’t deploy alone. Both Delta and DEVGRU have their own highly specialized support elements, which include air assets, drone operators, cyber warriors and intelligence analysts, who are all experts in their fields and far superior to anything the Secret Service could ever dream of bringing to the fight.

It is clear the left will never stop weaponizing unstable individuals with their heated anti-Trump rhetoric. History has shown they’ll watch their mouths for a week or two, but then resume their “threat to democracy” hogwash en masse, as if on cue.

The Congressional investigations into the first assassination attempt will take months and likely blame only low-level supervisors who have already been allowed to retire and keep their federal pensions. Meanwhile, President Trump remains at risk.

By the Grace of God, he survived two assassination attempts. Delta and DEVGRU operators could guarantee there will never be a third.

Josh Hawley
🚨🚨 NEW WHISTLEBLOWER allegations – this time about the latest attempt on Trump’s life. Whistleblower alleges Secret Service apparently failed to account for “known vulnerabilities” at Trump’s golf course. Shooter was able to lie in wait for 12 hours. What is the explanation?

You don’t say…..

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FBI received tip about Ryan Routh in 2019 but probe was closed, authorities say

The FBI received a tip about the suspect behind the apparent assassination attempt of former US president Donald Trump five years ago but the investigation was later closed, authorities have revealed.

Ryan Routh, 58, was arrested on Sunday after authorities said he stalked Trump as he golfed in West Palm Beach, Florida, with an AK-47-style rifle.

Prosecutors said that Routh would be charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
In a press conference on Monday, the FBI said it received a tip in 2019 about Routh being in possession of a firearm despite a prior felony conviction.

FBI Special Agent in Charge in Miami Jeff Veltri said the probe was closed after the tipster would not confirm making the report.

“In following up on the tip, the alleged complainant was interviewed and did not verify providing the initial information,” he said.

The FBI said it notified local police in Honolulu about the tip, but the investigation was closed.

Routh could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted on one of the charges.

A bond hearing has been scheduled for next week.

Authorities said Secret Service agents fired at Routh who then dropped the rifle and fled in a car, leaving the firearm behind along with two backpacks, a scope used for aiming and a camera.

He was taken into custody on Sunday after being stopped on a Florida highway.

The incident came two months after another attempt on Trump’s life at a rally in Pennsylvania.

During the press conference on Monday, the Secret Service said that Routh “did not have a line of sight” on Trump and never fired his weapon.

The FBI’s analysis of cell phone data showed Routh was around the golf course for about 12 hours before the Secret Service encountered him.

Routh, who owns a small Hawaii construction company, had previously criticized Trump on social media.

He also regularly posted about the war in Ukraine and had a website where he raised money and recruited volunteers to go to Kyiv.

Campaign finance records also revealed that Routh made 19 small political donations since 2019 to ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic candidates.

10 Years and $3 Billion for a New Mail Truck?
Oshkosh Defense’s USPS van is thousands of dollars more expensive than the industry standard.

The new U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDVs) have delighted drivers since hitting the road in Georgia last month, the Associated Press reports. But given the $5 billion investment required, taxpayers might be a tad less enthusiastic.

USPS prides itself on being “generally self-funded” through revenue from the sale of stamps, products, and services. As laudable and uncommon as this general self-funding is for federal agencies, USPS received $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act. USPS also has a pension system with a $50 billion unfunded liability for which the taxpayer may ultimately have to foot the bill, Reason‘s Eric Boehm explains.

Altogether, USPS expects its total investment in new vehicles to reach $9.6 billion. Considering a significant portion of this investment comes out of the U.S. Department of the Treasury (read: from taxpayers present and future), the public is entitled to scrutinize how this money was spent.

Of the 106,000 new delivery vehicles planned for purchase by 2028, 60,000 are NGDVs. Though exact prices are difficult to ascertain, the March 2022 order of 50,000 was valued at $2.98 billion. This brings the per-unit price of the NGDV to $59,600.

The duck-like NGDV is produced by Oshkosh Defense, the same company that manufactures the much scarier-looking Medium Caliber Weapon System, an armored combat vehicle armed with a 30 mm turret. Oshkosh’s NGDV will be phased into USPS’s fleet over the next four years to replace the iconic truck that has comprised its fleet since 1987: the Grumman Long Life Vehicle (GLLV), produced by the military contractor in partnership with General Motors, Poveco, and American Motor Corporation.

The Oshkosh NGDVs boast features lacking in the GLLV, such as airbags, anti-lock brakes, collision sensors, and blind-spot monitoring—features that have been standard for years in modern vehicles. Oshkosh says it won the $3 billion “competitively-awarded” contract for 50,000 NGDVs in 2021. But comparing the per-unit price to industry-standard alternatives, Oshkosh must have a 21st-century helicopter parent definition of competition.

In March 2022, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy initially planned for 10 percent of the NGDVs to be electric, as the USPS illustrates in a helpful graphic. Following lawsuits brought about by the attorneys general of 16 states, as well as the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice, CleanAirNow Kansas City, and Sierra Club California, DeJoy increased the portion of electric vehicles to over 50 percent by July 2022. By December 2022 that figure had increased to 75 percent.

Electric vehicles are about 17 percent more expensive than comparable internal combustion engine alternatives, according to automotive research company Kelley Blue Book. Accordingly, if the Oshkosh Defense contract were updated to reflect the increased proportion of more expensive electric variants of its NGDVs, the total value would be closer to $3.31 billion, making the average price per NGDV $66,200.

The manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of the 2025 Mercedes-Benz e-Sprinter, the likes of which are used in FedEx’s private fleet, is $61,180—$5,000 less than the price of the Oshkosh NGDV. The non-electric Mercedes-Benz Sprinter had an MSRP of $42,430 in 2021, per Kelley Blue Book, when the USPS-Oshkosh deal was made. That’s $17,000 less than the NGDV per-unit price of $59,600.

No matter how you slice it, the USPS-NGDV program has been an expensive boondoggle. It has dragged on for nearly a decade since its inception in July 2014, while the market capitalizations of private competitors like UPS, FedEx, and DHL have grown. As it turns out, you don’t need to outsource vehicle manufacturing to the military-industrial complex to deliver mail.

Blue States Can’t Ban Your Guns So They’ll Punish You For Using Them.

Try as they might, blue cities and states can’t seem to ban their citizens’ guns. They’ve enacted handgun bans, “assault weapons” bans, registration mandates, taxes, and levied confiscatory fees on guns, ammo, and carry permits. As a result, they’ve been challenged at every turn by those who take the Second Amendment at its word. And then Bruen came along and made the job of civilian disarmament even more difficult for aspiring tyrants.

What’s a gun-banner to do then? Simple. Make life hell for anyone who dares to use a gun they own, particularly in self-defense. Look no further for an example than what happened last night in Newton, Massachusetts.

A group of people were holding a peaceful pro-Israel rally when a Hamas supporter began yelling at them from across the street. The Hamasnik, who apparently couldn’t abide free speech being exercised in his presence, ran through traffic and assaulted one of the Israel supporters, jumping on him as his back was turned.

Watch video of the altercation here . . .

It’s hard to imagine a clearer case of self-defense after the Hamas supporter tackled a man who has been identified at 47-year-old Scott Hayes of Framingham, Massachusetts. It’s been reported that Hayes is a lawful gun owner and permitted carrier, though the police investigation is ongoing.

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CDC, FBI Hiding Data Showing Good Guys With Guns Save Lives

The federal government no longer enacts the will of the people. It enacts the will of some people, most of whom seem to be unelected bureaucrats who side with an anti-gun agenda. They do not care about our rights. They simply want to see guns restricted, most likely because an armed populace isn’t one that can be run roughshod over.

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But good guys with guns cause them a problem. How can you paint the use of guns as an unmitigated evil if good people use them to stop bad people?

What’s more, the federal government has numbers that back up the claim that good guys with guns save lives. However, as John Lott notes over at The Federalist, the feds are hiding them from us.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) under the Biden Administration has sought to suppress data proving that armed citizens help prevent crime by removing its estimates of defensive gun uses from its website. For almost a decade, the CDC referenced a 2013 National Academies of Sciences report noting that people used guns to stop crime anywhere from about 64,000 to 3 million times a year.

This decision was taken after gun control activist Mark Bryant, founder of the Gun Violence Archive, lobbied the CDC to remove “misinformation” regarding defensive gun use estimates because of they are cited by “gun rights folks” to stop gun control legislation. Soon after, the CDC took down these estimates and now lists no numbers.

This is probably the most profound case of bias I’ve ever seen. The CDC has the numbers and had enough faith in them to post them, then an anti-gun activist took issue with them and said they prevented gun control from passing, so the CDC took them down.

And they wonder how the Dickey Amendment came into being in the first place.

They knew the truth and suppressed it simply because activists saw the truth as a barrier and asked them to take it down. Would they have done the same with COVID-19 numbers? Would they do the same with drunk driving deaths or childhood drownings?

Of course not. Nor should they. If they believe in the numbers enough to post them, they should have stuck to their guns on this.

But the issue isn’t just the CDC.

Oh no, the FBI has to have its own problems.

The FBI has also shown itself to be susceptible to political pressure. The FBI defines an active shooter attack as occurring when an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area. This measure includes everything from just one person shot at, even if the target isn’t hit, to a mass public shooting. It doesn’t include, however, shootings involving other crimes, such as robbery or fighting over drug turf.

To compile its list, the FBI hired researchers at Texas State University. Police departments don’t record these cases, so the researchers relied on Google searches to find news stories about these incidents. As such, the FBI’s evidence relies on a dataset that is actively hostile to the truth.

During 2020 and the beginning of 2021, I worked as the senior advisor for research and statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice. My job included evaluating the FBI’s active shooting reports. During my time with the DOJ, I discovered that the FBI either missed or misidentified many cases of civilians using guns to stop attacks. For instance, the FBI continues to report that armed citizens stopped only 14 of the 350 active shooter cases that it identified in the ten years from 2014 to 2023.

The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), which I run, has found many more missed cases and is keeping an updated list. As such, the CPRC numbers tell a much different story: Out of 515 active shooter incidents from 2014 to 2023, armed citizens stopped 180, saving countless innocent lives. Our numbers even excluded 27 cases where a law-abiding citizen with a gun stopped an attacker before he could fire a shot.

Overall, the CPRC estimates that law-abiding citizens with guns have stopped over 35 percent of active shootings over the last decade and 39.6 percent in the last five years. This figure is eight times higher than the four percent estimate made by the FBI.

Now, 35 percent isn’t a massive number, but we need to remember that a lot of active shootings are happening in places where there are issues with law-abiding citizens being armed.

Potential mass murderers, for example, tend to favor gun-free zones for their attacks, such as schools like Apalachee High School in Winder. They also like malls, movie theaters, and other places where a large number of people are in one place and are generally disarmed by force of law. That means these incidents are less likely to be met with armed resistance not because good guys with guns don’t stop attacks but because the law makes sure there aren’t any good guys with guns.

Then we have the fact that a lot of other active shooter incidents happen in inner cities. These are often places where gun ownership is discouraged and, in the case of anti-gun states, where the government is outright hostile to the idea of citizens with guns. Before recently, getting a permit might have been impossible, thus making it far less likely a good guy with a gun could be anywhere near the scene of such a shooting.

And this is interesting because Lott wrote this well before the events in Winder.

In that case, school resource officers–good guys with guns, even if it was their job–reacted to the attack and ended the threat with an armed response. They didn’t have to kill the shooter, either. People like that tend to be cowards. Armed resistance scares them and so they surrender, run away, or just about anything else, even if the good guy doesn’t kill them.

For all the talk about gun control in the wake of Winder, I think the more important discussion is putting guns in school staff members’ hands.

Guns save lives, after all.

You can’t stop the signal when the horse is already out of the barn

Law enforcement leans on 3D-printer industry to help thwart machine gun conversion devices
Justice Department officials are turning to the 3D-printing industry to help stop the proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic transforming semi-automatic weapons into illegal homemade machine guns on streets across America

WASHINGTON — Justice Department officials are turning to the 3D-printing industry to help stop the proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic transforming weapons into illegal homemade machine guns on streets across America.

The rising threat of what are known as machine gun conversion devices requires “immediate and sustained attention,” U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Friday. That means finding ways to stop criminals from exploiting technology to make the devices in the first place, she said.

“Law enforcement cannot do this alone,” Monaco said during a gathering in Washington of federal law enforcement officials, members of the 3D-printing industry and academia. “We need to engage software developers, technology experts and leaders in the 3-D-printing industry to identify solutions in this fight.”

Devices that convert firearms to fully automatic weapons have spread “like wildfire” due to advancements in 3D-printing technology, according to Steve Dettelbach, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. His agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021.

“More and more of these devices were being sold over the internet and on social media, and more and more they were actually just being printed by inexpensive 3D printers in homes and garages everywhere,” Dettelbach said.

The pieces of plastic or metal are considered illegal machine guns under federal law but are so small they run the risk of being undetected by law enforcement. Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a sweet sixteen party in Alabama last year.

The devices “can transform a street corner into a combat zone, devastating entire communities,” Monaco said.

Monaco on Friday also announced several other efforts designed to crack down on the devices, including a national training initiative for law enforcement and prosecutors. The deputy attorney general is also launching a committee designed to help spot trends and gather intelligence.

Harris-led office, ATF stonewalling probe into ‘collusion’ with anti-gun group lawsuit: House Oversight chair
Both the White House and ATF have turned down multiple House Oversight inquiries into charges of ‘collusion’ with Chicago’s lawsuit against Glock

Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning on what she characterizes as a record of a tough former prosecutor. But a White House office she has “overseen” may have focused less on gun crimes and more on targeting a legal gun manufacturer.

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee says the Biden-Harris administration is stonewalling an investigation into potential “collusion” with a gun control group founded by billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to boost Chicago’s lawsuit against Glock Inc.

Since June, neither the White House nor the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, better known as the ATF, has responded to multiple inquiries from the committee.

The ATF missed its most recent deadline to respond to the committee on Wednesday, Aug. 28.

“The American people should be very concerned that, rather than prosecuting criminals, the Biden-Harris White House is colluding with anti-Second Amendment groups, and rather than responding to serious congressional requests with transparency, the White House is choosing to not comply with our request,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., told Fox News Digital.

The committee has been investigating the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention’s communications with the Everytown for Gun Safety regarding a lawsuit by the city of Chicago against Glock, a firearms manufacturer.

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Shooting Straight with John Lott

The mainstream media likes to use federal statistics as hooks for their one-sided gun-control narratives. The thing is, many of those statistics are suspect, even those from various federal agencies. The Crime Prevention Research Center’s (CPRC) work goes deep into how factual this “official data” is.

Indeed, when I reached out to John Lott, president and founder of the CPRC, he talked about his time working as a senior adviser for research and statistics at the Office of Justice Programs—a Department of Justice division that doles out about $5 billion in grants each year—during the Trump administration and about his research into crime and gun ownership. He has a lot to say about the statistics these agencies publish. As crime is an important topic in this upcoming election, we decided it was time to speak with Lott about how politically skewed these numbers from federal agencies can be.

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This brings back up ‘The Great Replacement Theory‘, but it appears to me to change the ‘why’ from mere political power to an actual hate of the normal average American who can’t be fooled all the time and can never be considered a reliable toady.

The Anti-Children Crusade

Depending on which sources you choose to believe, on or around the year 1212 A.D. there was a “crusade” made up largely of children. Supposedly it was a peace-minded movement to travel to the Holy Land and convert the Muslims there to Christianity. No, it didn’t work. Indeed, a great many of the participants were captured and sold into slavery. Others died of exhaustion before they got anywhere near the Holy Land.

Well, today there’s an ongoing “crusade” of another kind: an anti-children crusade. Those active in it will do just about anything to discourage live births, especially the births of white children. I’ve compiled a book of essays that touch on the subject. Also, Pascal and I write about it here now and then. It’s part of the reason for the decline of birth rates in Europe and North America.

The crusade against children has several parts. My fiction colleague Hans Schantz delineated some of its aspects here, in a passage from his novel The Hidden Truth. There are others beyond those Hans touches on, though. One emerged recently, from an unusual source:

     There’s a new U.S. surgeon general’s warning: Parenting can be harmful to your mental health.
     An advisory issued Wednesday by Dr. Vivek Murthy, the nation’s doctor, said parents in particular are under dangerous levels of stress.
     The report cites the American Psychological Association, saying nearly half of parents report overwhelming stress most days, compared with 26% of other adults. They’re lonelier, too, according to cited data from health insurer Cigna. In a 2021 survey, 65% of parents said they were lonely, compared with 55% of those without kids.

How about that, Gentle Reader! Taking responsibility for the life of a helpless human being comes with stress! Who could have guessed that before the Surgeon-General told us?

(By the way, how do we define “overwhelming stress?” Is there a metric of some sort? The number of antidepressants taken per week, perhaps? Or must we wait for the sufferers to commit suicide before we can confidently diagnose it?)

The stresses that impinge upon a household with minor children to care for are real enough. Yet our grandparents coped with them rather well. Generations before them did even better. That suggests that some, at least, of the stresses are of recent vintage. Rather than explore the matter in detail here and now, I’ll simply say “more anon” and proceed with my main point: the convergence of disincentives and discouragements against the bearing of children, which are most visible in First-World nations.

     A healthy fraction of those discouragements are deliberate. The people behind them don’t want white Americans to have children. White Americans – the people who built this country, and are still overwhelmingly responsible for keeping it going – are being out-reproduced by just about every other identifiable demographic. I leave the consequences to your imagination.

Who would find such a trend desirable, and why? Why does Vivek Murthy, “the nation’s doctor,” find it appropriate to add his voice to it? Anyone? Bueller?

More anon.