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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Frequently Debunked Crackpots Claim the AR-15 is Worthless for Self-Defense

When the young paste-eaters at Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun propaganda factory, known as the Trace, team up with the stodgy window-lickers at the Gun Violence Archive to produce a story about the utility of the AR-15 platform as a modern self-defense tool, it’s hard not to get too excited.

It’s like watching two freight trains headed toward each other on the same track. You know the results are going to be cataclysmic. None of these halfwits have ever heard a shot fired, much less one fired in anger, or especially one fired to good effect. They know less about what makes a reliable home defense weapon than I do about man-buns, skinny jeans, or avocado toast.

We have debunked the Trace and the Gun Violence Archive so often it’s getting old. The kids at the Trace masquerade as legitimate journalists when, in fact, they’re nothing more than highly paid anti-gun activists. The GVA purports to track gun crimes and maintain a list of mass shootings, but their data is collected from media, and even social media sources, and their stats are so inflated they’d have you believe a mass shooting occurs nearly every time someone draws from a holster. When the two anti-gun nonprofits combine for a story, it’s bound to be something as bereft of facts as it is poorly written, and to that standard their most recent collaboration does not disappoint.

A story published Tuesday asks: “How Often Are AR-Style Rifles Used for Self-Defense? Supporters of AR-15s, often used in mass shootings and racist attacks, say they’re important for self-defense. Our analysis of Gun Violence Archive data suggests otherwise.”

The story was written by one of the Trace’s senior fabulists, Jennifer Mascia, who is “currently the lead writer of the Ask The Trace series and tracks news developments on the gun beat.” Mascia has also led the Trace’s hilarious we’re journalists, not activists, propaganda campaign on social media.

Mascia reportedly searched the GVA’s data for “assault weapon,” which she said the GVA defines as “AR-15, AK-47, and all variants defined by law enforcement.” Of course, there’s no mention of whether the weapons were capable of select-fire and, therefore, actual assault weapons. She started with 190 incidents, which she whittled down for various reasons. The results: “That left 51 incidents over a nine-and-a-half-year span in which legal gun owners brandished or used an AR-style rifle to defend life or property. That averages out to around five per year.”

To be clear, I trust Mascia’s findings about as much as I trust the GVA data that produced the results. The whole story is GIGO – garbage in, garbage out.

It is noteworthy that the firearms “expert” whom Mascia found to further beclown herself – who wrote in a CNN story that the AR is the last gun he’d recommend for self-defense – is none other than former Washington D.C. police officer Michael Fanone. He’s the officer who cried a lot before the January 6 Commission – the one with the beard who cried a lot, if that helps jog your memory.

The network must have liked the cut of his jib. Fanone is now a CNN contributor and hawking a new book: “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.” (Nancy Pelosi highly recommended it.)

Since he’s so afraid of the AR platform, I can’t help but wonder what weapon Fanone, or for that matter, Mascia, would recommend for home defense. If I had to guess, it probably has two barrels, a wooden stock and exposed hammers.

I’m somewhat familiar with the AR myself, which is why I trust it to defend my hearth and home. It’s light, accurate, and deadly, which is exactly the point, and something we should stop making allowances for.

Despite the exhortations of Bloomberg’s activists or crybaby ex-cops, an AR-15 is exactly what I want when The Bad Man comes a-calling.

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.

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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David Hemenway Given Platform to Mislead on Guns by Obscure Online Outlet

David Hemenway, a Professor of Health Policy at Harvard University’s Injury Control Research Center, has been a proud proponent of anti-gun “research” for many years. Rather than relying on criminologists and experts in law enforcement to diminish violent crime where firearms are used, Hemenway long-ago jumped on the anti-gun bandwagon of trying to frame the discussion about gun-control from an approach of addressing it as a “public health” issue—as if there is some sort of vaccine that could be developed to stop violent criminals from being violent criminals.

One might consider him simply misguided, or perhaps he has just bought into what many on the far left do whenever faced with something they wish to control; frame it as a “public health” crisis.

But with Hemenway, it may be that he just hates guns and law-abiding gun owners, and all of his “research” he claims supports his radical theories is guided predominantly by confirmation bias. And who better to offer support for the theory that this particular anti-gun researcher just hates guns and gun owners than Hemenway himself?

A recent interview with Hemenway was posted by the online outlet Undark, a relatively obscure digital magazine with ties to any number of media outlets that hold extreme anti-gun views. Publishing partners include outlets that have shown anti-gun bias such as HuffPost, Mother Jones, NPR, Salon, and Slate. It should come as no surprise that Undark would give Hemenway a platform for his anti-gun views.

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The Washington Post Calls for Reducing Free Speech to Improve Democracy

In very post-2016 fashion, The Washington Post last week published an article implying democracy might require curbs on freedom of speech. This unsettling approach suggests concerns around “misinformation” on social networks supersede freedom of speech, a move that has elicited intense debate and, rightly so; criticism.

In what appears to be a shift in public discourse towards further censorship, the widely-read Washington Post article critiqued Elon Musk’s reinstatement of former President Donald Trump on the social media platform, X, previously known as Twitter.

The article suggested that the proliferation of what it calls “political misinformation” disturbs democracy, sparking concern amongst proponents of free speech.

The perspective is reflected in the reporting by The Washington Post journalists Naomi Nix and Sarah Ellison. However, their piece lacks critical analysis of the ambiguity surrounding the term “misinformation” and fails to address the consequential question of how to moderate content in situations where politicians’ statements are arguably false or misleading.

The article’s glaring omission of any mention of the First Amendment – a core pillar of American democracy fostering media freedoms – also raised eyebrows amidst media and legal circles.

The Washington Post reporters worryingly suggest the retreat of social media companies from combating online falsehoods could impact the 2024 presidential election. They fault Musk, along with Facebook and YouTube, for taking a step back from reining in what they call misleading claims and conspiracy theories.

Nix and Ellison also critique X for permitting Tucker Carlson’s President Trump interview, which they deem as a platform for Trump to reiterate his allegations about the 2020 election. They contend that social media should only host political content if its accuracy can be proven, posing an unrealistic expectation that conceals underlying issues of censorship under the pretext of curbing “misleading” or “hateful” speech.

The Slanted Findings of a Gun-Control “Study”

Everytown for Gun Safety is a Michael Bloomberg-funded gun-ban group that has never heard of an anti-gun proposal that it hasn’t supported. So, when Everytown recently joined with The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab to study “youth” and guns, it should come as no surprise that they “found” exactly what they were looking for.

The combined groups’ new “study,” titled “U.S. Youth Attitudes On Guns Report,” concluded that pro-gun youth are more likely to hold supremacist or racist views. “Evidence from this study suggests that pro-gun attitudes were associated with more extreme worldviews like male supremacist ideation and racial resentment,” the report stated.

Before we get into the nuts and bolts, let’s first take a look at an interesting aspect of the research. While it explicitly states “Youth” in the headline, the study participants ranged from 14 to 30 years old. Even the most-liberal definitions of “youth” tend to use the parameters of 14 to 24. While there is no consensus on what defines “youth” under law in the U.S., nearly every state, along with the federal government, considers the age at which one becomes an “adult” to be 18 years old. Some may debate including 18- to 24-year-olds among “youth,” but adding 25- through 30-year-olds to the study ensures it doesn’t have any validity concerning American “youth.”

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IRS Backdating Of Documents Highlights Festering Cultural Rot: ‘If The IRS Doesn’t Play By The Rules, They’re The Mob.’

Bloomberg, IRS Backdating Court Order Spotlights Culture, Attorneys Say:

An unusual Tax Court order requiring the IRS to report what it knew and when about misstatements in a conservation easement case, as well as mounting claims of backdating forms at the agency, are highlighting what some tax attorneys said are festering IRS cultural problems, years in the making.

The Tax Court this week ordered the IRS to identify when agency personnel found out about misstatements to the court about the date that a $15.2 million penalty against conservation easement donor LakePoint was approved. …

Rod Rosenstein, former deputy attorney general under President Donald Trump, is representing LakePoint in a FOIA lawsuit against the IRS and told Bloomberg Tax he’s reached out to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

He plans to refer to the watchdog claims made by three other partnerships—Arden Row Assets LLC, Basswood Aggregates LLC, and Delwood Resources LLC—who are asking the IRS to admit its staff backdated penalty approval forms in their cases as well.

“The question is whether we’re seeing one isolated case or whether were seeing evidence of a pattern of misconduct in IRS,” Rosenstein said. “I think if you’ve looked at these other three cases, it does suggest that there is a pattern.” …

Tax attorneys say it’s the latest chapter highlighting festering issues of IRS culture being taken over by adversarial us-versus-them attitudes at the agency. Conservation easement cases have been especially contentious [Michelle Abroms Levin, a former Justice Department Tax Division attorney,] said.

“What they have now is a win-at-all-costs culture, and I hope we can shift back to a ‘Let’s find a right answer. Let’s find the correct amount,’” she said.

[Frank Agostino, a former IRS lawyer and Department of Justice criminal prosecutor] … said this attitude is eroding much-needed trust in the institution and fueling attitudes among taxpayers that the agency is breaking the rules to extract as much money from them as it can.

“We’re not the mob, but that’s the worry,” he said of the agency. “The IRS, if they don’t play by the rules, gets the perception of being the mob.”

They want us disarmed?


There Can Be No Negotiating on the Right to Arms — with Hate Groups or with Anyone

“Senate Majority Leader @SenSchumer  is negotiating with the NRA to pass his priority bill – the SAFE Act, a cannabis banking legislation – with Section 10 added as a sweetener for the NRA-backed Senate Republicans,” Newtown Action Alliance tweeted (x’ed?) Monday. “We appreciate @SenJackReed  working to modify the bill to ensure that regulators can warn banks about risky customers – like gun retailers. Congress should not be negotiating with the NRA, a terrorist group that is pushing its any guns to anyone everywhere agenda. Guns are the #1 killer of our children & gun deaths have increased 50% since the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy.”

That’s a lot of vitriol-drenched lies to unpack. Let’s start with NRA’s interest, which is passage of the  Fair Access to Banking Act to protect against “banks, credit card companies, and other financial service providers [setting] terms of service that openly discriminate against lawful firearm-related commerce.” Gun owners who recall the days of Operation Chokepoint recall the offensive excesses – from financial ostracism of FFLs and the pejorative conflation equating them with purveyors of “Ponzi schemes” and “racist materials” to the ridiculous revelation that ATF’s banker was stiffing porn stars – pun intended. (Note: Those last two links go to the Internet Archive and may take a bit to load).

Democrat gun-grabber Jack Reed’s interest is in imposing Operation Chokepoint on steroids, this time by mandating Department of Precrime “snitchware” via “Merchant Category Codes” developed by a “progressive” bank affiliated with a leftist union that “rakes in millions from Dem campaigns, liberal orgs,” and has organized rallies and marched in solidarity with communists.

Suddenly motives are seeming less and less about “gun safety” and more and more about totalitarian citizen disarmament. So, let’s look at the last part of Newtown Action Alliance’s missive.

Congress should just impose such edicts and not include the largest lobby group representing millions of gun-owning citizens in its deliberations…? Leave them with no voice in what’s going to happen to their property — and to them if they don’t comply…?

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By 

Dr. Grant, a contributing Opinion writer, is an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School
(nice when they provide pictures for positive ID)

On the eve of the first debate of the 2024 presidential race, trust in government is rivaling historic lows. Officials have been working hard to safeguard elections and assure citizens of their integrity. But if we want public office to have integrity, we might be better off eliminating elections altogether.

If you think that sounds anti-democratic, think again. The ancient Greeks invented democracy, and in Athens many government officials were selected through sortition — a random lottery from a pool of candidates. In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors. What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?

People expect leaders chosen at random to be less effective than those picked systematically. But in multiple experiments led by the psychologist Alexander Haslam, the opposite held true. Groups actually made smarter decisions when leaders were chosen at random than when they were elected by a group or chosen based on leadership skill.

 

Why were randomly chosen leaders more effective? They led more democratically. “Systematically selected leaders can undermine group goals,” Dr. Haslam and his colleagues suggest, because they have a tendency to “assert their personal superiority.” When you’re anointed by the group, it can quickly go to your head: I’m the chosen one.

When you know you’re picked at random, you don’t experience enough power to be corrupted by it. Instead, you feel a heightened sense of responsibility: I did nothing to earn this, so I need to make sure I represent the group well. And in one of the Haslam experiments, when a leader was picked at random, members were more likely to stand by the group’s decisions.

Over the past year I’ve floated the idea of sortition with a number of current members of Congress. Their immediate concern is ability: How do we make sure that citizens chosen randomly are capable of governing?

In ancient Athens, people had a choice about whether to participate in the lottery. They also had to pass an examination of their capacity to exercise public rights and duties. In America, imagine that anyone who wants to enter the pool has to pass a civics test — the same standard as immigrants applying for citizenship. We might wind up with leaders who understand the Constitution.

A lottery would also improve our odds of avoiding the worst candidates in the first place. When it comes to character, our elected officials aren’t exactly crushing it. To paraphrase William F. Buckley Jr., I’d rather be governed by the first 535 people in the phone book. That’s because the people most drawn to power are usually the least fit to wield it.

The most dangerous traits in a leader are what psychologists call the dark triad of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. What these traits share is a willingness to exploit others for personal gain. People with dark triad traits tend to be more politically ambitious — they’re attracted to authority for its own sake. But we often fall under their spell. Is that you, George Santos?

In a study of elections worldwide, candidates who were rated by experts as having high psychopathy scores actually did better at the ballot box. In the United States, presidents assessed as having psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies were more persuasive with the public than their peers. A common explanation is that they’re masters of fearless dominance and superficial charm, and we mistake their confidence for competence. Sadly, it starts early: Even kids who display narcissistic personality traits get more leadership nominations and claim to be better leaders. (They aren’t.)

If the dark triad wins an election, we all lose. When psychologists rated the first 42 American presidents, the narcissists were more likely to take reckless risks, make unethical decisions and get impeached. Add a dash of Machiavellianism and a pinch of psychopathy, and you get autocrats like Putin, Erdoğan, Orbán and Duterte.

Eliminate voting, and candidates with dark triad traits would be less likely than they are now to rise to the top. Of course, there’s also a risk that a lottery would deprive us of the chance to select a leader with distinctive skills. At this point, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. As lucky as America was to have Lincoln at the helm, it’s more important to limit our exposure to bad character than to roll the dice on the hopes of finding the best.

Besides, if Lincoln were alive now, it’s hard to imagine that he’d even put his top hat in the ring. In a world filled with divisiveness and derision, evidence shows that members of Congress are increasingly rewarded for incivility. And they know it.

A lottery would give a fair shot to people who aren’t tall enough or male enough to win. It would also open the door to people who aren’t connected or wealthy enough to run. Our broken campaign finance system lets the rich and powerful buy their way into races while preventing people without money or influence from getting on the ballot. They’re probably better candidates: Research suggests that on average, people who grow up in low-income families tend to be more effective leaders and less likely to cheat — they’re less prone to narcissism and entitlement.

Switching to sortition would save a lot of money too. The 2020 elections alone cost upward of $14 billion. And if there’s no campaign, there are no special interests offering to help pay for it.

Finally, no voting also means no boundaries to gerrymander and no Electoral College to dispute. Instead of questioning whether millions of ballots were counted accurately, we could watch the lottery live, like we do with teams getting their lottery picks in the NBA draft.

Other countries have begun to see the promise of sortition. Two decades ago, Canadian provinces and the Dutch government started using sortition to create citizens’ assemblies that generated ideas for improving democracy. In the past few years, the French, British and German governments have run lotteries to select citizens to work on climate change policies. Ireland tried a hybrid model, gathering 33 politicians and 66 randomly chosen citizens for its 2012 constitutional convention. In Bolivia, the nonprofit Democracy in Practice works with schools to replace student council elections with lotteries. Instead of elevating the usual suspects, it welcomes a wider range of students to lead and solve real problems in their schools and their communities.

As we prepare for America to turn 250 years old, it may be time to rethink and renew our approach to choosing officials. The lifeblood of a democracy is the active participation of the people. There is nothing more democratic than offering each and every citizen an equal opportunity to lead.

Joe Biden Boasts He Has Bypassed Congress for Gun Control More than Any Other President

On August 17, 2023, President Joe Biden boasted about the number of times he has used executive action to institute gun control that Congress did not pass.

He tweeted:

On April 8, 2021, Breitbart News reported Biden used executive gun controls that included restrictions on “ghost guns,” a push for red flag laws, recategorization of AR-15 pistols, and DOJ-led research into gun trafficking.

These controls led to an ATF-issued rule classifying “partially complete pistol frames” as firearms. That rule means a background check is now required in order to purchase certain gun parts kits.

The  same executive controls also led to an ATF-issued rule categorizing AR-pistols with stabilizer braces as short-barrel rifles. This new categorization means owners of said pistols with stabilizer braces are required to the register the firearms under the auspices of the National Firearms Act (1934).

On July 21, 2022, the White House recounted that Biden had issued 21 executive actions related to gun control and gun violence up to that point in his presidency.

On May 14, 2023, Breitbart News noted that Biden issued yet another executive order on gun control, this one directing Attorney General Merrick Garland to act where Congress has not acted and take the United States “as close as possible” to universal background checks.

Another executive gun control is anticipated late this year or early next year, in the form of an ATF-issued rule to redefine the meaning of gun dealer so as to broaden it, and thereby broaden the number of gun sales in which a background check will be required. The goal of the ATF rule will be to get as close as possible to a universal background check scenario in America.

ATF’s director says the quiet part out loud and refers to inalienable rights as a ‘privilege’

What a bizarre development in American politics that has seen the federal government cultivate and embrace a fiery disdain for the very ideals upon which itself was founded.

An item published at The Western Journal [on the 19th] reported that the ATF is intensifying its war against the pro-gun portion of the body politic; from the article:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is escalating efforts to strip gun dealers of their federal firearms licenses.

The licenses, which enable businesses to sell firearms for profit, are being revoked in increasing numbers….

The ATF has yanked 122 federal firearms licenses, or FFL’s [sic], from dealers this fiscal year alone.

That’s up from 90 in all of fiscal year 2022, and merely 27 in fiscal year 2021.

In June of 2021, Department of Injustice’s Merrick Garland announced a new “Gun Crime Prevention Strategy” which in part, focused on compliance inspections of FFL businesses. Some of the offenses which would result in “notice of [license] revocation” included:

  • Refusal to allow an IOI [Industry Operations Investigator] to conduct an inspection
  • Transferring a firearm to a prohibited person
  • Failing to conduct a required background check
  • Falsifying records
  • Failing to respond to a trace request

Now aside from the fact that the ATF has absolutely no right to exist, I know enough about the bureau to know they have one of the worst reputations out of the more than 438 federal agencies, so it’s reasonable to assume at least some of the “compliance” investigations weren’t “lawful” — as loosely as you can use that term for an agency that’s unlawfully operating. Just because the ATF calls their unreasonable searches and seizures a “request” or a compliance “inspection” doesn’t make it so; I can only wonder if 122 firearms dealers last year told federal agents to take a hike until they came back with a warrant?

According to the Western Journal article, Joe Biden’s ATF Director Steve Dettelbach said of the business owners with revoked licenses, “They’re not going to have the privilege of being a gun dealer anymore.”

Someone needs to remind Dettelbach, and every other aspiring despot in Biden’s regime, that rights come from God, not government — the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, was written to affirm this reality, and this government, this brilliant and extraordinary new government conceived in liberty and born out of a rebellion to tyrants, would guarantee that it was not a benevolent authority doling out “privileges” at it saw fit, but rather a safeguard for inalienable rights that came from a moral Authority; nothing more, and nothing less.

Of course, the Founders emphasized that human beings have a right to self-defense, or to keep and bear arms as noted in the Second Amendment, and we have a right to autonomy and privacy, or the right to be secure in our persons, houses and effects, as noted in the Fourth Amendment.

Death by bureaucracy, or regulation, is the modus operandi of the gun-grabbers. They come after the brass mines with OSHA; they use the CDC to declare “gun violence” an epidemic; they buy out reloading supplies on the market for years to come via FDA and NIH government contracts ; they choke out the points of sale with the ATF’s “Enhanced Regulatory Enforcement Policy.”

Strangely, you rarely read news stories about the ATF targeting anybody other than the gun community; it was never really about alcohol or tobacco now was it?

Okay, this tells us that they know SloJoe is such a liability that if he can’t be stopped, he’s going to lose.

Jake Tapper Stuns CNN’s Audience: “Trump Was Right and Joe Biden Was Wrong”

CNN’s Jake Tapper came clean and admitted that Trump was right and Joe Biden was wrong about Hunter Biden’s shady dealings in China.

TAPPER: Let’s turn to the Biden administration because Jeff you have some new reporting that President Biden might have a blind spot, according to people around him when it comes to his son Hunter Biden’s legal troubles and concerns about how this might impact his desire to be reelected. What do you got? What are you hearing?

ZELENY: Well, look, this is something that the President was hoping to put behind him. They were hoping that the plea agreement would go through, et cetera. Now there is very likely to be a trial unfolding at the same time as a presidential campaign. Even worse, a second special counsel’s investigation on top of the one that’s already investigating the President for classified documents.

So the point talking to a bunch of advisors is that this is something that is not discussed around the President in his orbit because they do not think voters care about it.

They think voters care about the economy, other matters. They’re probably right about that. However, we know that this is going to be a central piece of the Republican debate and Republican talking points next week and beyond, the Hunter Biden situation.

So what do swing voters think of Hunter Biden? As of now, they’ve never sort of drawn a correlation or blamed the President for his son’s conduct. They feel sympathy for him, et cetera.

But is there a blind spot directly around him and the campaign by not talking about this? It’s verboten. You can’t talk about Hunter Biden. We’ll see.

This is definitely going to be a topic on the debate stage this week.

TAPPER: Yes. And Kristen, Glenn Kessler from “The Washington Post” had a fact check about Joe Biden from earlier this month noting that Hunter Biden admitted in court in July that he was, in fact, paid substantial sums from Chinese companies.

Kessler wrote, Hunter Biden reported nearly $2.4 million income in 2017 and 2.2 million income in 2018, most of which came from Chinese or Ukrainian interests.

But this — and this directly goes against what Joe Biden said in the debate in 2020 with Donald Trump.

Biden administration best understood as a junta

I have come to realize that the Biden administration is nothing but a junta.

Those who constitute it are the opposite of the Founders.  They don’t believe in limited government — of, by, and for the people.  They do not believe in objectivity — or freedom of speech, religion, and assembly.  They do not believe in “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,” or in their right to be free from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”  (Just ask Roger Stone or Donald Trump.)  Nor do they believe in equality under the law, the people’s right to a “speedy and public trial” by a jury of one’s peers (just ask Donald Trump), natural law, etc., etc.  And they certainly don’t believe that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  In fact, in recent years, they appear increasingly to disdain all these concepts…because they obviously increasingly disdain those who disagree with them and/or who could stand in the way of the ever-increasing power and control they have over others — power and control they revel in and believe they richly deserve.

They do believe in a Supreme Ruler.  But they believe they are that Supreme Ruler.  They believe they have the right — indeed, duty — to rule over the “deplorables” in rural areas and flyover country.  Preposterously, they purport to believe that their ideas and policies must be implemented, whether the rest of us like it or not…if we are to “save our democracy.”  There is nothing less democratic — or more deplorable — than that.

The alphabet agencies that Obama and Biden have fully politicized and weaponized are now on roughly the same objective and moral plane as the Nazis’ SS or Brownshirts, East Germany’s Stasi, or the Soviet Union’s KGB.  The CIA, FBI, Department of Injustice (DOI?), and the rest are so boldly and brazenly partisan — and aggressive in pursuing their agenda — that it is breathtaking to those of us who knew a younger and more innocent America.

Modern-day Democrats’ signature tactic is to vehemently (and indignantly!) accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they have done — and of being exactly what they are.  As I have stated repeatedly, they are very good at being evil.  Newt Gingrich had it exactly right in a recent interview with Sean Hannity, whom he schooled.

Donald Trump is kryptonite to the Adam Schiffs of the world, the evildoers, and those in the Deep State and the swamp.  That is why they called him a fascist, authoritarian, etc.  And why they are attempting to indict/imprison/destroy him now.  For such “crimes” as tweeting “Georgia hearings now on @OANN.  Amazing!”  Yes, they indicted him for tweeting his opinion of a cable news show.

If we truly want to remove the junta — and save our representative republic — we must help Trump in his fight against the vast left-wing conspiracy that is the Democrat-Media-Complex.