Category: Bureaucraps

Leaked ATF report: Private gunmakers are criminals, terrorists and violent extremists
When it comes to overhyping the next “threat” to the homeland, the ATF seldom disappoints.

If there is any federal agency that can be counted on to create a problem just to justify their own existence it is certainly the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

When it comes to overhyping the next “threat” to the homeland – regardless of the facts – the ATF seldom disappoints.

The embattled agency’s latest piece of creative fiction is a warning about “privately made firearms” or PMFs, and it should serve as a warning to gun owners, homebuilders and everyone else who values their civil rights.

An ATF document titled “First Responder Awareness of Privately Made Firearms May Prevent Illicit Activities,” was published last week by the Joint Counterterrorism Assessment Team (JCAT).

“JCAT is a collaboration by the NCTC, DHS and FBI to improve information sharing among federal, state, local, tribal, territorial governments and private sector partners, in the interest of enhancing public safety,” the document states. “This product is NOT in response to a specific threat against the United States. It provides general awareness of, considerations for, and additional resources related to terrorist tactics, techniques and procedures, whether domestic or overseas.”

To be clear, the ATF and JCAT consider homebuilt firearms “terrorist tactics, techniques and procedures,” even though Americans have been making guns legally in their homes since before there even was a United States of America.

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48 SENATORS TELL ATF TO BACK OFF ON PISTOL BRACES

A group of Republican U.S. Senators last week called on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to withdraw its proposed rule largely banning the use of stabilizing braces on pistols.

Every current GOP senator in Congress, except for Rob Portman of Ohio and Susan Collins of Maine, signed the letter, dated June 24, addressed to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and acting ATF Director Marvin Richardson. The letter argues the proposed rulemaking, which would reclassify most of the braced pistols in their current format as short-barreled rifles under the National Firearms Act of 1934, is bordering on oppression.

“The way the proposed rule is written makes clear that ATF intends to bring the most common uses of the most widely possessed stabilizing braces within the purview of the NFA,” wrote the Senators. “Doing so would turn millions of law-abiding Americans into criminals overnight, and would constitute the largest executive branch-imposed gun registration and confiscation scheme in American history.”

Estimates by the ATF are that a minimum of 1 million Americans would be impacted by the proposed rule. Meanwhile, the Congressional Research Service thinks the true numbers could trend as high as 40 million.

As there is no grandfathering allowed under the rule – even for guns lawfully purchased with braces pre-installed by the manufacturer – owners of such newly-defined SBRs would have to either turn the braced pistol over to Uncle Sam, permanently remove or alter the brace so that it cannot be reattached, remove the short barrel from the firearm and install one at least 16-inches in length, destroy the firearm, or submit a Form 1 and $200 to convert it to a legal, registered SBR.

“This is plain wrong,” continued the senators. “The proposed rule is worse than merely abdicating your responsibility to protect Americans from criminals; you’re threatening to turn law-abiding Americans into criminals by imposing the largest executive branch-initiated gun registration and confiscation program in American history. We urge you to turn back. Correct this mistake and withdraw the proposed rule.”

The letter from the senators joins a similar one signed by 141 Republicans in the House of Representatives. Currently, the open period on the ATF’s proposed rule has some 105,000 comments.

It appears that criminals committing crimes doesn’t matter to the goobermint.

ATF’s Behavior Paints Ominous Picture for Biden’s “Crackdown” on FFLs

According to the president and his ever-obliging attorney general, a “crackdown” is coming on America’s federally licensed gun dealers (FFLs), with “zero tolerance” for allegedly illegal behavior. While no decent person – least of all the NRA or its members – supports arming dangerous criminals, a recent case from Texas provides disturbing hints as to what this policy might look like in practice.

Biden announced the new effort last week while finally acknowledging what was already obvious to most Americans: violent crime, particularly in America’s cities, is on the rise.

It came as no surprise, however, that Biden was unwilling to admit the culpability of his own party’s disastrous “defund the police” initiatives, as well as a host of “progressive” criminal justice “reforms” that had the effect of curtailing enforcement and allowing dangerous offenders to roam the streets.

Instead, the administration continued its long string of blood libel by falsely blaming the NRA, America’s law-abiding gun owners, and the industries that serve them for the violence decimating many of the nation’s most vulnerable communities.

Attorney General Merrick Garland disclaimed any intention to intensify efforts to punish those actually pulling the triggers. “[A]rrests and convictions,” he indicated, are not “ends in themselves.”

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 Senate Judiciary Committee Deadlocks On Chipman Confirmation Vote

On Thursday morning the Senate Judiciary Committee split evenly on advancing David Chipman’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

11 Democrats voted for him with 11 Republicans opposed.

Reuters notes this puts the Chipman nomination in a tough spot, but suggests “it is not an insurmountable roadblock.”

President Joe Biden nominated Chipman, a long-time gun control advocate and affiliate of Gabby Giffords’ gun control work, to lead the ATF.

During May 26, 2021, confirmation hearings, Chipman affirmed his support for a ban on AR-15s and other firearms the Democrats label “assault weapons.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) asked Chipman to define “assault weapon,” but Chipman demurred, choosing instead to say, “An ‘assault weapon’ would be, in the context of the question you ask, whatever Congress defines it as.”

The Washington Post reports that a floor vote is the next stop for Chipman’s nomination, as that is the means by which Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) can “discharge the nomination from committee.”

Chipman is not expected to receive any Republican support if his nomination reaches the Senate floor for a vote.

White House Doc Shows Plan To Use Threat of “Domestic Terrorism” For Gun Control

Is the White House using the threat of “domestic terrorism” to institute gun control? According to a White House document titled the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” gun control is a crucial component of Joe Biden’s plan.

The document says there is a rise in domestic violet extremists (DVE). It highlights the biases against minority populations as one factor of the growth of DVEs. It also states that those that believe that the Federal government is overreaching its power are at risk for becoming extremist, and the “perceived government overreach will almost certainly continue to drive DVE radicalization and mobilization to violence.”

While left-wing groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter are not mentioned in the document, patriot groups are referred to as militia violent extremist (MVEs). Last summer, left-wing riots caused havoc across the country, causing millions of dollars of damage to properties and cost several people their lives.

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Susan Collins Delivers a Blow to Controversial Biden ATF Nominee’s Confirmation

The confirmation of President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), David Chipman, received another blow on Tuesday. GOP Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who has voted for some of Biden’s nominees, announced that she will not support Chipman’s controversial nomination.

“After meeting with Mr. Chipman, listening to Mainers, and reviewing his record, I have decided to vote against Mr. Chipman’s nomination to serve as the ATF Director,” Collins said in a statement, per Fox News. “In recent years, Mr. Chipman has been an outspoken critic of the firearms industry and has made statements that demean law-abiding gun owners.”

The senator went on to criticize Chipman as a “divisive” pick who has potential to infringe on Second Amendment rights.

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‘They Must Have Been Cheating’: Watchdog Group Sues For Records Relating To Derogatory Comments Biden’s ATF Pick Allegedly Made Against Black Agents

A conservative watchdog group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Tuesday for records that could shed light on an incident in which President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allegedly made a derogatory comment about black agents.

The pro-gun control nominee, David Chipman, told Sen. Ted Cruz in writing that he received two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints during his 15 years as a manager with the ATF. Chipman said the complaints were “resolved without any finding of discrimination and no disciplinary action was taken against me.”

Chipman added that his ATF personnel file is under the control of the federal government, but he did not answer when asked if he would be willing to provide his file to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The ATF declined to comment to the DCNF.

Tom Jones, the president of the American Accountability Foundation, said he filed two FOIA requests with the ATF in May requesting records related to any complaints and disciplinary measures taken against Chipman during his 25-year tenure with the agency. The AAF’s lawsuit said the ATF failed to produce the records in the timeframe allotted by the law, despite Chipman’s acknowledgment in his written statement to Cruz that the federal government has control of his personnel file.

Jones said AAF’s FOIA lawsuit could produce records related to an incident around 2007 in which Chipman allegedly made a derogatory comment about black ATF agents performing too well on a selection exam.

Jones told the Daily Caller News Foundation he spoke with a former ATF agent who personally witnessed Chipman making the derogatory comment after reviewing results for candidates who had passed an assessment to become an assistant special agent in charge.

Jones said the former ATF agent recalled Chipman saying: “Wow, there were an unusually large number of African American agents that passed the exam this time. They must have been cheating.”

According to Jones, the former ATF agent was “incensed” upon hearing Chipman’s comment and reported the incident to the EEOC.

Chipman was the assistant special agent in charge of the Detroit Field Division at the time he allegedly made the derogatory comment.

The DCNF’s attempts to reach the agent who reported Chipman’s comments to the EEOC were unsuccessful.

Another former ATF agent who worked in the Detroit office at the time told the DCNF that Chipman’s alleged comments about African Americans “spread like wildfire at the agency.”

The former Detroit-based ATF agent, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, did not personally witness Chipman making the comment, but recalled colleagues talking about how Chipman “made this remark that all the African Americans must be cheating because there’s no way they could get these scores.”

Thousands Flood ATF With Comments Over Rule Change That Could Land Millions of Americans in Legal Trouble

Stephen Gutowski of The Reload has been covering the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ attempt to ban pistol braces. There’s no wiggle room. No grandfather clause. They’re trying to make them illegal, thus turning millions of Americans into felons for exercising their constitutional right to own firearms. Some 10-40 million Americans have firearms with these stabilizing pistol braces. It’s a backdoor ban. Biden doesn’t have the legislative majorities to pass what he wants to pass, so his people are looking at the existing regulations, tweaking them, and they found a big one here. This new ATF regulation is potentially the largest gun registration and confiscation scheme in American history.

Notice of the rule change has garnered over 30,000 comments in less than a week. Gutowski sifted through some of the good ones while noticing that the anti-gun left seems a bit lackadaisical about this move. You’d think they get their people mobilized. They haven’t. Nothing. It’s been dead silence. It’s not formal legislation, but it’s a test run for what they want to do with firearms in America. Here is what The Reload found:

In only five days, the rule change has received nearly 37,000 comments. That’s tens of thousands more comments than most proposals ever get and the two other proposals in the Federal Register’s “popular documents” section have just 143 and 8 comments respectively. The comments on the brace ban were also overwhelmingly negative with people accusing the administration of overstepping its authority and putting millions of Americans in legal jeopardy. The Reload reviewed dozens of comments and couldn’t find any in support of the rule change.

“This is the most arbitrary set of rules I’ve ever heard of,” said Jack Ort, “and you’ll just make millions of normal Americans into felons despite a complete lack of evidence that these braces are a problem.”

The backlash could jeopardize the proposal if it grows big enough. The Trump Administration withdrew a similar proposal in 2020 after an outcry from gun makers and gun owners. The Obama Administration pulled a proposal to ban a kind of ammunition commonly used in AR-15s after it received more than 300,000 public comments opposing it.

[…]

“The ATF’s attempt to provide clarity around what does and does not constitute a pistol brace is vague,” he said. “Using words like ‘intent’ (which is near impossible to prove in a court of law) in the points scoring system essentially renders it unenforceable.”

Others accused the agency of trying to legislate instead of interpreting existing law. Peter Fittante said the ATF is “trying to make laws by rule making” and bypassing Congress. An anonymous commenter took it a step further.

“The change of this law, which has precedent established, without legislation or judicial oversight is not only unconstitutional, but abjectly immoral,” the person said.

[…]

Disabled gun owners also argued the braces, which were designed to help the disabled shoot certain guns more easily, were vital to them.

“The newly proposed arbitrary and confusing rules on braces directly affects me and tens of thousands of other disabled Americans,” James Miller said. “Because of a combination of spinal stenosis and lupus, I have trouble holding a full sized rifle. Using an arm brace on what is termed a pistol but is the exact same firearm as one with a full sized stock makes it possible for me to continue to exercise my Constitutionally protected right to hunt and compete in shooting sports.”

You already know this, folks. The rule change does nothing to enhance safety. It has nothing to do with law and order. It’s a gun grab test. There is no benefit to this rule change other than the government taking another spin in trampling civil rights. Gutowski did ask the ATF about their rule change. They couldn’t really answer them and told him to place them in the comments section. That’s how you know this rule is trash.

The old line about the NCO corps being the backbone of the military is no lie. They’re the ‘middle management’ where the generic orders of the officers get turned into reality.
In making other ‘woke’ and ‘diversity’ criteria more important than expertise in the specialty and the ability to get the job done, the goobermint has forgotten the lessons of the immediate post-Vietnam 1970s military that was a hot mess until some serious minded Generals and service Secretaries took matters in hand and drastically increased standards.

BLUF:
We’re going to find out that identity politics will destroy the military readiness and combat effectiveness of what was once the world’s premier fighting force. The hard way.

This is How the Pentagon Wokesters are Eroding Non-Commissioned Officer Standards

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s “revolution in woke military affairs” continues apace. First, there was the ridiculous 60-day leadership stand-down as the taste of things to come in ferreting out “white nationalists” and other supposed bogeymen in the US military. That process accelerated with Austin’s appointment of fellow West Point graduate Bishop Garrison as “Senior Advisor to The Secretary of Defense on Human Capital and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Garrison’s portfolio includes implementing immediate actions to combat “patriot extremism,” as well as the development of the mid-term and long-term recommendations for the continued engagement to combat future patriot extremism in the ranks.” Improve military readiness and combat effectiveness? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Oh, by the way, according to Garrison, “patriot extremists” include those who voted for President Trump in 2020. Is that too extreme? Hardly, as FoxNews commentator Pete Hegseth cover the ongoing “patriot purge” here:

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Biden Admin’s Proposed Gun Rule Would Turn Millions Into Felons

A legal cloud descended over many American gun owners on Monday.

A new rule proposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) at the request of President Joe Biden would make most firearms with stabilizing pistol braces illegal. Owners would have to register, turn in, or disassemble the guns to avoid federal felony charges. One government estimate found as many as 40 million guns could be affected.

“It will be the largest gun registration, destruction, and confiscation scheme in American history,” Alex Bosco, who invented the stabilizing brace and founded the biggest manufacturer of them, told The Reload.

The rule outlines a complex point system the agency wants to create to judge when a gun with a stabilizing brace should be classified as a pistol and when it should be classified as a short-barrel rifle requiring registration under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). The proposal aims to reconcile the ATF’s decade-long track record of approving the braces on a case-by-case basis. That process was often criticized by members of the gun industry and gun-rights movement as arbitrary and contradictory.

But gun advocates said the new system is worse than the old. While the system gives objective measures for the weight or length of the guns affected, opponents pointed to the seemingly random criteria used to determine which braces are legal and which aren’t. They said factors like whether the gun can be easily fired with one hand or whether an attached brace is adjustable in length have no basis in the statute, which sets the line between pistols and short-barreled rifles at whether the gun is “designed and intended” to be pressed against the shooter’s shoulder.

“Today’s proposed rulemaking on pistol-braced firearms represents a gross abuse of executive authority,” said Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs for Gun Owners of America, in a statement.

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The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak:

The Covid-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus.

The possibility that the pandemic began with an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is attracting fresh attention. President Biden has asked the national intelligence community to redouble efforts to investigate.

Much of the public discussion has focused on circumstantial evidence: mysterious illnesses in late 2019; the lab’s work intentionally supercharging viruses to increase lethality (known as “gain of function” research). The Chinese Communist Party has been reluctant to release relevant information. Reports based on U.S. intelligence have suggested the lab collaborated on projects with the Chinese military.

But the most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science. In particular, consider the genetic fingerprint of CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for the disease Covid-19.

In gain-of-function research, a microbiologist can increase the lethality of a coronavirus enormously by splicing a special sequence into its genome at a prime location. Doing this leaves no trace of manipulation. But it alters the virus spike protein, rendering it easier for the virus to inject genetic material into the victim cell. Since 1992 there have been at least 11 separate experiments adding a special sequence to the same location. The end result has always been supercharged viruses. . . .

In the case of the gain-of-function supercharge, other sequences could have been spliced into this same site. Instead of a CGG-CGG (known as “double CGG”) that tells the protein factory to make two arginine amino acids in a row, you’ll obtain equal lethality by splicing any one of 35 of the other two-word combinations for double arginine. If the insertion takes place naturally, say through recombination, then one of those 35 other sequences is far more likely to appear; CGG is rarely used in the class of coronaviruses that can recombine with CoV-2.

In fact, in the entire class of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, the CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here. A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus.

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DOJ Issues Proposed Rule On Pistol Braces, Model “Red Flag” Legislation

Two months ago, President Joe Biden announced his first executive actions on gun control, promising that the Department of Justice and the ATF would issue proposed rules aimed at cracking down on the proliferation of home-built firearms and AR-style pistols that use stabilizing braces, which Biden and other anti-gun advocates want to declare as items subject to the National Firearms Act. The DOJ’s proposed rule on so-called “ghost guns” was unveiled a few weeks ago, and today the DOJ released the agency’s proposed rule dealing with pistol braces, along with model “red flag” legislation that the administration is hoping states will adopt in the coming months.

You can read the full proposed rule regarding pistol braces here, but in essence the DOJ and ATF are proposing the adoption of a new “worksheet” that the firearms industry and individual gun owners can use to determine if an AR-style pistol equipped with a stabilizing brace will likely be considered by the ATF to be a pistol or a short-barreled rifle subject to registration under the National Firearms Act. I say likely because the agency still hasn’t issued a clear directive one way or the other. If the firearm in question has certain characteristics that the ATF says make it more likely to be shoulder-fired, then the ATF will likely determine that the gun is in fact a short-barreled rifle.

In order to make their new proposal comply with existing law, the ATF is proposing to redefine what a rifle is under both the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms act by adding an additional sentence to the current definition.

The new sentence would clarify that the term “rifle” includes any weapon with a rifled barrel and equipped with an attached “stabilizing brace” that has objective design features and characteristics that indicate that the firearm is designed to be fired from the shoulder, as indicated on ATF Worksheet 4999.

If that sounds like a really vague definition of “rifle” to you, you’re not alone. You shouldn’t have to fill out a worksheet to figure out if a gun is a rifle or not, but that’s exactly what the ATF would require as opposed to establishing (or keeping) the clear definition that’s been in place in the National Firearms Act since the 1930s.

The worksheet itself lacks objective criteria in many regards. For instance, if the “rear surface” of the stabilizing brace is “useful for shouldering the firearm,” then that makes it more likely that the firearm the stabilizing brace is attached to will be considered a short-barreled rifle, but the agency doesn’t explain what would make that surface “useful” or not. A telescoping or adjustable brace also makes it more likely that the gun in question would be considered an NFA item, though an adjustable brace is useful for AR-style pistols, since not everyone’s arm is the same length and an adjustable brace makes it easier for a user to correctly use the brace as it’s intended.

In short, this looks like an attempt by the DOJ, the ATF, and the Biden administration to declare that millions of legally-owned AR-style pistols are actually subject to the provisions of the National Firearms Act without directly saying so.

As for the model “red flag” legislation, the DOJ has come up with an incredibly broad proposal that would allow almost anyone to petition the courts to seize someone’s firearms using a very low legal standard, but would make it incredibly difficult for those subject to an Extreme Risk Protection Order to get their guns returned to them. At the same time, the model legislation is incredibly vague on many of the specific details, leaving it up to the states to determine many of the particulars in terms of implementation.

Under the model legislation, law enforcement, family members, household members, dating or “intimate partners”, health care providers, school officials, and “any other appropriate persons” included by the state could start the “red flag” process, and the first court hearing could take place before the person who’s the subject of the petition is even aware that it’s been filed. After that ex parte hearing has taken place, a second hearing would be held where the subject can try to rebut the allegations of the petitioner, but it’s important to note that nothing in the DOJ proposal provides for any sort of public defender in cases where the petitioner cannot afford an attorney.

The Biden administration recommends that any red flag order lasts for a year, but again leaves it up to the states to decide how long the firearms seizure should last. Under the model legislation, any “red flag” order could also be renewed an unlimited amount of times, turning what’s supposed to be a temporary measure aimed at a person in crisis into a potential lifetime ban on owning guns, even if the petitioner has never been accused of any criminal activity whatsoever.

The model legislation is a suggestion to the states, unlike the proposed rule on stabilizing braces, which have the potential to turn millions of legal gun owners into felons for simply maintaining possession of their brace-equipped AR-style pistol if the ATF were to decide that their firearm is actually a short-barreled rifle. The public comment period hasn’t yet opened, but when it does gun owners and Second Amendment supporters should speak out and reject another attempt by the Biden administration to rewrite the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act through regulations instead of using Congress to make those changes via legislation. The votes may not be there for Congress to enact these changes, but that doesn’t give the administration the authority to do so unilaterally.

Gun sales: Best May ever, 2021 set to crush record, public ‘afraid of violence, tyranny’

As Democrats and President Joe Biden continue to promote gun control instead of targeting those who commit violent acts, people in May continued to flood gun stores, giving the month the record for FBI background checks.

The latest FBI data suggest that 2021 will be another record year for background checks and sales, topping the nearly 40 million checks in 2020.

One eye-popping statistic: 2021 looks to double the number of background checks and sales of 2015, when 23 million checks were conducted. While not a one-to-one match, background checks track gun sales. Background checks are also conducted in some instances for security clearances and concealed carry permits.

Still, the record pace shows the growing popularity of weapons. Gun stores and industry officials said the surge is being driven by minorities and women concerned about their safety as they see violence, especially in urban areas, increase.

The popularity of firearms is evident in gun stores across the nation where inventory is low and the availability of ammunition is scarce.

Politically, Democrats and the media have seized on the murder rate to blame guns, rarely the victimizers. But sales show that the public is not moved by that argument. Polls show also that the public stands against the anti-gun efforts of Biden.

“There has never, not once, been an accepted study that correlated increased violent crime with increased gun sales. In fact, it’s been proven over and over again that an armed populace is a polite populace. Criminals, for the most part, do not acquire their guns legally,” said Justin Anderson, the marketing director for Hyatt Guns of Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the nation’s biggest gun stores and a regular gun analyst for Secrets.

“The reason gun sales are going through the roof is simple: Law-abiding citizens are afraid. They are afraid of violent crime. They are afraid of the lawlessness that has been spread by riotous criminals. They are afraid of an inept and tyrannous government. In essence, people are starting to realize what most gun owners have known for years: You are your own first responder and that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away,” he added.

Mark Oliva, spokesman for the industry group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, also cited politics for the sales jump.

“These figures are hardly surprising to the firearm industry which is battling against the Biden administration’s attacks on gun rights of law-abiding citizens,” Oliva said. “Anyone looking for the root causes of why this continues can easily see the reasons. These include the nomination of David Chipman, a paid gun control lobbyist and gun control zealot, who admitted before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he wants to ban the most popular selling rifle in America, along with the administration’s proposed rule to redefine unfinished firearm parts as completed firearms and the pending proposal to reclassify pistol fitted with a brace as items strictly controlled by the National Firearms Act.”

“These actions show the contempt this administration holds for gun owners. The reaction is predictable. Americans are exercising their right to keep and bear arms before this administration oversteps their Constitutional authority to deny that right,” he said.