ATF Will Shut Down eForms After Christmas to Retool for Zero Dollar Tax Stamps

As you surely recall, one of the features of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill that’s near and dear to the hearts of gun owners is the elimination of the $200 tax on suppressors, short-barrel rifles and short-barrel shotguns. No longer will you have to fork over a couple of Benjamins for the privilege of buying a can for your AR or pistol caliber carbine. And if you decide an 11-inch barrel suits your need in a rifle better than one that’s 16 inches or more (18+ inches for shotguns), you won’t have to send Uncle Sam any of your hard-earned dollars.

This welcome change will take effect on January 1.

That means, however, some system tweaks are needed for our friends in ATF’s NFA Division. To make the necessary upgrades to handle the law change, they’re going to shut the eForms system down for Form 1 and Form 4 submissions after Christmas to let their geeks get to work.

From ATF . . .

On December 26, the eForms system will be temporarily unavailable while we upgrade the system to permit reduction to tax rates for certain NFA firearms.

    • The ATF eForm 1 and ATF eForm 4 will be made unavailable on the eForms platform with no new electronic submissions available until January 1.
    • All ATF eForm 1 and ATF eForm 4 applications in a DRAFT status will be deleted from the eForms system.

All completed ATF eForm 1 and ATF eForm 4 applications submitted within eForms before December 26 will be processed before January 1.

This is necessary to implement statutory changes contained within the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which reduced the making and transfer tax for certain firearms to $0. Deletion of all DRAFT applications is necessary because of the field and formatting changes required on the new forms, available January 1. This will also allow ATF to add additional functionality to the Form 4, allowing both qualified licensees as well as other transferors to submit Form 4 applications through the eForms system.

If you’ve ever been through a system change or upgrade, you know that the process seldom goes to plan. Let’s hope ATF has its digital ducks in a row. As noted above, any eForm applications in draft status when the system goes down will be zapped, so act accordingly.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

 

Soros: The Other Billionaire Behind the Anti-Gun Agenda

Everyone knows that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is knee deep in funding just about every anti-gun effort that comes around the bend. The man has it bad for gun rights, and I have no idea why, especially as he’s surrounded by armed bodyguards all the time. He can’t be that anti-gun.

He’s just anti-you having a gun.

But he’s far from the only billionaire funding the anti-gun agenda. Another name is one familiar to anyone who follows the left-leaning money trail on pretty much any issue, and that’s George Soros.

As Frank Miniter notes at America’s 1st Freedom, Soros is a major funder of anti-gun efforts via his Open Society Foundations.

Indeed, the Hungarian-born billionaire’s public persona could have been inspired by Ian Fleming’s villains in his James Bond novels. Soros, who is now 95 years old, could be a combination of Dr. No and Ernst Stavro Blofeld (a character the Austin Powers trilogy parodied so well!). Indeed, Soros’ Open Society Foundations can be SPECTRE level nefarious.

The Washington Free Beacon recently jumped into this topic with a piece titled, “‘Assault on Our Sovereignty’: How George Soros Funds Foreign Government Lawsuits Against American Gun Makers.”

The report details how Soros’ Open Society Foundations helped fund the anti-gun group Global Action on Gun Violence (GAGV), which worked with Mexico to bring a lawsuit against U.S. firearms manufacturers, a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court—the Court ruled 9-0 that Mexico could not make gun makers pay for criminal actions in Mexico.

“Over the years, Soros has funneled $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations, which in turn bankrolls many leftwing causes throughout the world,” explains NRA-ILA.

Indeed, Soros’ money has been used against Americans’ Second Amendment rights for decades.

“In 2000, Open Society published a widely circulated report entitled, Gun Control in the United States. The publication called for a host of new federal and state gun restrictions … . In the early 2000s, Open Society also gave support to gun control groups such as the Million Mom March, the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, and Women Against Gun Violence. Further, the group funded various dubious lawsuits against the gun industry, including a high-profile case brought by the NAACP.

Now, I’m not saying that Soros is a real-life Bond villain. I’m just saying that I don’t know anything that a real-life Bond villain would do differently.

Especially since people compared Elon Musk to just such a character for working with President Donald Trump, when he hasn’t come close to the level of manipulation of our society that Soros has.

Couple his efforts with Bloomberg’s, and what we’ve clearly got here is the money behind the efforts.

While the anti-gunners love to make a big thing about money playing a role in the gun debate, our money tends to come in the form of private individuals donating what they can to organizations they believe in, while the gun control side is funded by billionaires who wouldn’t know what it’s like to have to defend the lives of themselves and their families. They hire people for that and if you can’t afford to do the same, well, you’re just not important enough to live.

I’m sure some will try to flip the script and make out like my issue is some other characteristic of these two men, but it’s not. I don’t even care that they’re rich. That doesn’t bother me at all.

It’s that they’re trying to destroy this country by taking away the very right our Founding Fathers enshrined in the Bill of Rights to protect all others.

SAF Files Amicus Challenging Lifetime Firearm Ban

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed an amicus brief with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a case challenging the federal lifetime ban on firearm possession as applied to an individual with a decades-old misdemeanor DUI conviction.The case, Williams v. Attorney General of the United States, will be argued before an en banc panel in February. SAF is joined in the amicus filing by the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Second Amendment Law Center.

“The government’s position defies Bruen and Rahimi by seeking to impose a permanent disarmament on a law-abiding citizen based solely on a nonviolent misdemeanor from 20 years ago, with no evidence of ongoing danger,” said SAF Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros. “History shows that Founding-era laws addressed the risks of intoxication and firearms through temporary restrictions on those currently impaired, never by stripping gun rights forever from someone who once drank irresponsibly but has since reformed. We urge the Court to reject this overreach and affirm the district court’s ruling.”

If the Third Circuit rules in favor of Mr. Williams, it could have major implications for many others who are disarmed due to similar convictions.

“This case highlights the unconstitutional overreach of federal disarmament laws that ignore historical limits and present-day realities,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “SAF is committed to defending the rights of individuals like Mr. Williams, and we believe this case warrants the Court’s careful consideration.”

For more information visit SAF.org.

“There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship: one-party rule—executions without trial or with a mock trial, for political offenses—the nationalization or expropriation of private property—and censorship. A country guilty of these outrages forfeits any moral prerogatives, any claim to national rights or sovereignty, and becomes an outlaw.”
– Ayn Rand

Comment O’ The Day
The irony of a jew calling for disarmament of people in the light of an Islamic attack on a Jewish holiday against a people who were defenseless because they were disarmed by their politicians.

US government sues US Virgin Islands and accuses officials of violating the Second Amendment

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A Second Amendment clash has erupted between the federal government and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The U.S. government sued the U.S. territory, its police department and Police Commissioner Mario Brooks on Tuesday, accusing them of obstructing and systematically denying American citizens the right to possess and carry guns.

The U.S. Virgin Islands requires that applicants demonstrate “good reason to fear death or great injury to his person or property,” and to have “two credible persons” to vouch for their need of a firearm. Local law also requires that someone have “good moral character” to obtain a gun permit, which is valid for up to three years and applies to a single weapon.

The lawsuit states that no specific standard has been set or defined for the requirement of character. It also claims that the defendants “regularly” refuse to issue permits to those who by law are “deemed to be an improper person” by the territory’s police commissioner.

The lawsuit states that those in the U.S. territory also must “submit to intrusive and warrantless home searches” as one condition to obtain a gun permit. If an applicant refuses a home inspection, which takes “several months to a year to schedule and complete,” the government will not process their request, according to the lawsuit.

Could cheese protect your brain health? Study links high-fat cheese and cream to lower dementia risk.

Eating more high-fat cheese and high-fat cream may be linked to a lower risk of developing dementia, according to a new study published in Neurology. This study does not prove that eating high-fat cheese and high-fat cream lowers the risk of dementia, it only shows an association.

High-fat cheeses contain more than 20% fat and include varieties such as cheddar, Brie and Gouda. High-fat creams typically contain 30–40% fat and include whipping cream, double cream and clotted cream. These are commonly labeled as “full-fat” or “regular” versions in stores.

“For decades, the debate over high-fat versus low-fat diets has shaped health advice, sometimes even categorizing cheese as an unhealthy food to limit,” said Emily Sonestedt, Ph.D., of Lund University, Sweden.

“Our study found that some high-fat dairy products may actually lower the risk of dementia, challenging some long-held assumptions about fat and brain health.”

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These People Don’t Think the Muslim Hero of Bondi Beach Is a Hero at All

It seems as if the whole world is celebrating Ahmed al-Ahmed, who tackled one of the jihad mass murderers at Australia’s Bondi Beach, last Sunday, but there are more than a few notable holdouts.

“Ahmed al Ahmed,” Bernie Sanders wrote on Monday, “a Muslim father of two, risked his life to disarm a murderer who was shooting down Jews celebrating Hanukkah in Sydney. Religion must not divide our common humanity. We must stand together and end antisemitism, Islamophobia and all hate — no exceptions.”

The superannuated socialist was not alone. Ahmed al-Ahmed has been hailed around the world, and deservedly so, as he prevented many more people from being killed.  Ahmed al-Ahmed is, however, more valuable to some, like Bernie Sanders, for his appearing to prove that the problem of terrorism is not a problem of Islam. It is not accidental that Sanders went out of his way to identify al-Ahmed as “a Muslim father of two,” while referring to the jihadi al-Ahmed tackled simply as “a murderer,” without noting that the murderer in question was acting in accord with the teachings of Ahmed al-Ahmed’s religion, which contains core texts teaching venomous hostility to Jews and including such indelible exhortations as “Kill them wherever you find them” (Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, 4:91, cf. 9:5).

Some Muslims, however, being better informed about their religion than Bernie Sanders is, demonstrated that they were well aware that the Bondi Beach murderers were Muslims. They knew that Ahmed al-Ahmed was a Muslim as well, and weren’t happy about that at all.

The Daily Mail reported Thursday that “Ramallah News, one of the most popular news outlets in Palestine,” by which the politically correct rag likely means Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, as well as Gaza, “shared a story about Mr al-Ahmed’s brave actions on Sunday.” Yet among Palestinian Arabs, al-Ahmed’s actions were not regarded as a cause for celebration: “Ramallah News’ post about Mr al-Ahmed was quickly spread around Arab communities, which overwhelmingly condemned him for saving Jewish lives.”

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Tim Walz Tries to Create a Backdoor Firearm Registry After Gun Ban Fails in State Legislature.

Tim Walz may actually be one of those politicians who really is as dumb as he looks. Despite the DFL’s [Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party] virtual control of Minnesota government, he still couldn’t gin up enough support to push an “assault weapons” ban through the legislature. About that situation, he wasn’t happy.

Not willing to allow that very public failure to stand, he signed two executive orders yesterday designed to generate some, uh, positive headlines in the state’s cooperative legacy press as a way to blunt the effects of the legislative defeat, the latest in a long string of very bad news for the hapless knucklehead who sits in the big chair.

From Northern News Now . . .

Governor Tim Walz signed two executive orders on Tuesday morning, surrounded by DFL lawmakers and advocates for gun violence prevention.

“I do not have the capacity as governor to issue an executive order to get rid of [assault weapons], but what I do have the ability to do is to start to move in a direction,” he said ahead of signing the orders.

The first order, according to Walz, aims to expand the administration’s efforts to provide added education on so-called red flag laws and safe storage practices.

The order will also require insurance companies to submit homeowners’ policy and claims data on firearms, using the state’s existing authority to issue “data calls” to recommend possible policy changes to the legislature.

Using taxpayer dollars to encourage the use of due process-free red flag law firearm confiscation isn’t anything new. It’s been done by the usual suspects at both the federal and state levels. But Walz is also creating a bureaucratic monstrosity he’s euphemistically calling the “Statewide Safety Council.” In practice it will likely serve the same purpose in the Land o’ Lakes as Biden’s now defunct White House Office Gun Violence Prevention.

As the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus describes it . . .

The newly announced Statewide Safety Council raises serious concerns. The council is composed entirely of appointed officials and pro–gun control advocates, with no representation from the Second Amendment community. Like similar advisory panels in the past, it appears designed to deliver predetermined recommendations aligned with the Governor’s policy goals rather than to provide balanced input or genuine stakeholder engagement.

And then there’s Walz’s attempt to hoover up data on gun owners from insurance companies . . .

“The insurance companies, they need to let us know what the economic impact is,” said Walz, “We know what the economic impact is. We know what the emotional impact is; now we can quantify it.”

The only thing is, economic data isn’t likely the only thing Walz is looking for here. Again from the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus . . .

We are closely reviewing the legality of Governor Walz’s executive order directing state agencies to gather data from insurance companies, including any information related to firearms owned by peaceable, law-abiding Minnesotans.

We have already heard from dozens of our members who are deeply concerned that the Walz administration is attempting to build a registry of gun owners and the firearms they legally own by using insurance records as a backdoor mechanism.

Let us be clear: any attempt to track or monitor Minnesota gun owners will be met with fierce resistance.

We will take all appropriate legal and legislative action to protect the privacy, dignity, and rights of Minnesotans under the Second Amendment and the Minnesota Constitution.

The Constitution is not a suggestion.

Governor Walz does not get to decide which rights are convenient to ignore.

This looks very likely to be challenged in the courts. Stay tuned.