Protecting the Second Amendment – Why all Americans Should Be Concerned

[Florida Patriot]

https://breaking911.com/rep-gaetz-ca...m-brace-usage/

Rep. Gaetz Calls on ATF to Cease Plans Restricting Arm Brace Usage
June 16, 2020

Congressman Matt Gaetz announced today on his podcast he is sending a letter to the ATF demanding they cease any plans to restrict lawful possession of arm braces, which are pistol stabilizing accessories, by American citizens.

“We understand that ATF is currently considering restricting one arm brace model owned by over 700,000 Americans,” Congressman Gaetz writes along with six other members of Congress. “We strongly urge ATF to cease taking any actions and reconsider or rescind any secret determinations which call into question the legality of firearms owned by millions of law-abiding Americans.”

“There is always a need to vindicate our Second Amendment rights,” Gaetz says on his podcast, “Hot Takes with Matt Gaetz.”

He explains that even during very conservative administrations, like President Trump’s, some do “try to make it more difficult to acquire things that shooters need and gun owners need, for safety and for the unique circumstances that an individual may have.”

The congressman emphasizes that Americans must remain proactive in defense of their Second Amendment Rights.

“But now, what we find, is that the ATF is making it very difficult for people to have arm braces. They’re changing standards and changing rules.” Gaetz continues: “And I am particularly frustrated when our government, at the administrative and executive level, goes beyond their grant of authority in our Constitution and in our Federal Statutes. Nothing gives anyone at ATF the ability to constrain the use of arm braces.”

“So the breaking news is this – I’ll be sending a letter to the Department of Justice, asking for a review of the decisions made by ATF and asking that ATF stop, in this crazy effort to limit access to arm braces for people who seek to have them.”

Congressman Gaetz addresses Attorney General William Barr and Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Regina Lombardo in his letter, and says that he is concerned about the ATF’s practice of creating secret regulation, which could have devastating impacts on law-abiding citizens.

Gaetz and his colleagues pose three specific questions to the Attorney General and the Acting Director:

1. What specific criteria does ATF use to determine whether a firearm is designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder?

2. What specific ATF publications are available for Americans to determine whether their firearm is designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder?

3. How many firearms with affixed arm braces have been evaluated by the Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division in support of other law enforcement agencies or criminal prosecutions?

“This practice not only burdens the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens,” Gaetz concludes, “but has recently been used by ATF to stifle innovation within the firearms industry and prosecute unwitting firearm owners.”

[JJ_BPK]

Originally Posted by Florida Patriot

https://breaking911.com/rep-gaetz-ca...m-brace-usage/

Rep. Gaetz Calls on ATF to Cease Plans Restricting Arm Brace Usage
June 16, 2020

as is the current phrase de jour "Unfund the ATF"

[bblhead672]

Originally Posted by JJ_BPK

as is the current phrase de jour "Unfund the ATF"

Agreed.

[tom kelly]

AGREE; UNFUND & REDUCE THEIR ABILITY TO IMPOSE LAWS & RULES. Another example of a Gov. Bureaucracy employees imposing their will to infringe the rights of citizens.

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by Florida Patriot

Gaetz and his colleagues pose three specific questions to the Attorney General and the Acting Director:

1. What specific criteria does ATF use to determine whether a firearm is designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder?

2. What specific ATF publications are available for Americans to determine whether their firearm is designed and intended to be fired from the shoulder?

This is going to be interesting. ATF doesn't seem to have a history of evaluating firearms in that sense. They evaluate the device (e.g., a brace). There are also in the wild copies of letters from them wherein:

- the first inspector's eval letter invoked a warning against shouldering the completed firearm and, when the company's lawyer pushed back to clarify...
- got an answer back from that inspector's boss who spent 1-1/4 pages using a lot of words to say "my subordinate was full of shit. We evaluate the DEVICE, not the intentions of the owner."

So 2 different takes on something without any guidance for a citizen to know whether he just made himself into a felon. And when bossman retires, and the first inspector takes over... that's how "policy" changes, again without the citizen knowing it. The whole thing needs to be in a dumpster.

[Florida Patriot]

Originally Posted by Badger52

This is going to be interesting. ATF doesn't seem to have a history of evaluating firearms in that sense. They evaluate the device (e.g., a brace). There are also in the wild copies of letters from them wherein:

- the first inspector's eval letter invoked a warning against shouldering the completed firearm and, when the company's lawyer pushed back to clarify...
- got an answer back from that inspector's boss who spent 1-1/4 pages using a lot of words to say "my subordinate was full of shit. We evaluate the DEVICE, not the intentions of the owner."

So 2 different takes on something without any guidance for a citizen to know whether he just made himself into a felon. And when bossman retires, and the first inspector takes over... that's how "policy" changes, again without the citizen knowing it. The whole thing needs to be in a dumpster.

This without any doubt.
Bureaucrats creating policy/regulation/law without congressional oversight is tyranny in the making. Where is our representation in the ivory tower.

[Ret10Echo]

Originally Posted by tom kelly

AGREE; UNFUND & REDUCE THEIR ABILITY TO IMPOSE LAWS & RULES. Another example of a Gov. Bureaucracy employees imposing their will to infringe the rights of citizens.

TK,

Good point here to be teased out and what we have forgotten as the momentum that brought the current Administration into office.

CABINET LEVEL AGENCIES CAN NOT CREATE LAWS

THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH CAN NOT CREATE LAWS.

The ability of cabinet-level and independent agencies to unilaterally create "regulations" outside of the legislative process has gone off the rails. It is a political tool right up there with the executive order. Whether this is BATFE, EPA or other self-proclaimed regulatory agencies.

"We the People" stopped paying attention and this creep of regulatory policy is like a mold growing inside the walls of your house silent yet killing you slowly.

[Box]

The unfortunate glitch in the system is the legion of bureaucrats that roam the streets enforcing laws that don't exist.

[tonyz]

June 2020 the trend continues...3,931,607 background checks.

For context, last June 2019 there were 2,312,309 background checks...that was previously the largest June on record.

NICS Firearm Background Checks:
Month/Year
November 30, 1998 - June 30, 2020

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/...month_year.pdf

[PSM]

Originally Posted by tonyz

June 2020 the trend continues...3,931,607 background checks.

For context, last June 2019 there were 2,312,309 background checks...that was previously the largest June on record.

NICS Firearm Background Checks:
Month/Year
November 30, 1998 - June 30, 2020

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/...month_year.pdf

Probably more than that. Here in AZ, if you have a CCW, you don't need another NICS as long as the license is active.

[Last hard class]

California ban on high capacity magazines rejected.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/u...magazines.html



LHC

[tonyz]

The threat to Second Amendment rights as we currently know them is evident in his stated plans.

With the sudden increase in crime do these positions really make sense in saddling otherwise - law abiding citizens - with this type of choking regulation?

You know...they often say that Chicago is flooded with guns from “gun friendly” states...but those gun friendly states (those state’s allegedly awash in legal gun ownership) don’t seem to suffer from the same levels of gun violence as Chicago.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s the people and not the inanimate object ?


THE BIDEN PLAN TO END OUR GUN VIOLENCE EPIDEMIC

https://joebiden.com/gunsafety/#

.

[tom kelly]

This is not the only part of the U S Constitution that the radical communist democrats are targeting for elimination. They, the radical progressive democrats have the intention of complete control over the people living in the U S A today, tomorrow, and forever...They must be stopped, not by voting them out of office but by cutting off their life-support THE MSM, propaganda machine, we all know the bad actors, CNN, NYT, Wash. Post, MSNBC, ABC, CBS. The MSM is controlled by people like Jeff Bezos & his billions of dollars. Their objective is power. They must be stopped.

[tonyz]

With Governor’s, Mayor’s, DA’s and other government officials essentially ordering the police to “stand down” ...along with reckless and irresponsible calls to defund the police during these riots...this piece caught my eye.

Confessions of a New Gun Owner
Even in suburbia, people are losing confidence the police will keep them safe.

By William McGurn
WSJ
Sept. 14, 2020 7:09 pm ET

On Monday it became official: The police issued me a gun permit.

Never did I imagine I’d be here. Not because I was anti-gun. My dad was a career FBI agent, so my siblings and I grew up with guns.

At the same time, my father was never particularly interested in guns. To no avail, we would beg him to go to shoots to show off his skills. More frequently he would remind us that many who keep guns in the house are more likely to shoot a friend or family member than a would-be robber or rapist. His proudest boast about his own career was that not once did he have to shoot anybody.

This may help explain why we all grew up supporting the Second Amendment in principle while not much interested in the practice. What changed? Certainly the rioters played a key part. But far more shocking than the rioters themselves has been the associated spectacle of police and political authorities across America standing down in the face of night after night of criminal behavior directed at the lives and livelihoods of innocent, law-abiding citizens.

Even in suburbia, many are no longer confident our authorities would or could keep us safe. In a small suburb such as mine, what would happen if even 100 or 200 people bent on violence were to arrive at once? Could our small police force really handle it? Or would we be left to fend for ourselves like Mark and Pat McCloskey in St. Louis, who defended their home and were then treated as if they were criminals?

A few years back, I asked a former colleague whom I knew to be pro-Second Amendment philosophically if he owned a gun. He answered no, and then asked if I had one. I said I wouldn’t know what to write down as my reason for wanting one.

He told me, “Write down, ‘Because I don’t trust the government.’ ”

That might have worked for the Founding Fathers. But in today’s New Jersey—a state ranked by the Giffords Law Center’s annual Gun Law Scorecard as the nation’s most restrictive after California—the response might be 40 squad cars on the front lawn by morning. I say this only half in jest: Do other Americans buying guns for the first time find it as grating as I do to learn that we need government permission to exercise a constitutional right?

Equally illuminating has been learning about guns and those who own them. Over four decades in the news business, I have often written about the National Rifle Association, usually about some proposed new gun law. Most recently the NRA has been in the headlines over a lawsuit filed by New York’s attorney general in which she accuses top leaders of decades-long corruption and misspending.

But our family’s decision to buy a gun has introduced us to the side of the NRA more Americans see: the education side. The NRA has courses, online and in person, for almost everything. The NRA instructor my wife and I engaged, Billy De Almedia, was firm, professional and patient.

It’s not just the instruction that impresses. It’s the sheer Americanness of a private organization established to support a constitutional right in all its manifestations, from defending the Second Amendment legally and philosophically to instilling in newbies such as myself the respect for guns necessary to keep and use them safely. Not to mention a taste of the satisfaction that comes from mastering a new discipline.

Surely if the government were to assume the functions the NRA provides, the experience would be akin to going to your local Department of Motor Vehicles. In America, by contrast, the ethos emphasizes private initiative and responsibility. In our new interactions with gun owners, gun instructors and owners of gun ranges, my wife and I have found them unfailingly eager to help and to answer even the dumbest questions.

This year a record five million law-abiding Americans, like us, have become new gun owners. Many don’t fit the stereotype: African-Americans account for the largest percentage jump in gun ownership, while women are 40% of first-time buyers. These new buyers join an even larger demographic: the 43% of American households that already have a gun.

The record gun sales for 2020 may have implications for swing states in November as well. In Pennsylvania alone, the National Shooting Sports Foundation reckons there are 276,648 first-time gun owners this year. To put this in perspective, in 2016 Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes.

Now, I appreciate how unlikely it is that I will ever reach for a gun to defend my home or myself. But after watching the mayhem that’s taken over so many city streets I wonder, probably with plenty of my fellow first-time gun buyers, what alternative I’d have if ever I had to make that terrible 911 call—and it went unanswered?

<snip>

https://www.wsj.com/articles/confess...er-11600124943

[cat in the hat]

Originally Posted by Florida Patriot

This without any doubt.
Bureaucrats creating policy/regulation/law without congressional oversight is tyranny in the making. Where is our representation in the ivory tower.

Isn't the guy running for re election supposed to be a second amendment guy?
Why doesn't he direct his agency to stand down on the issue DACA style?