2A Newsletter: February 4th

Biden Administration Reminds Us All That They’re Coming After “Ghost Guns”

This week, President Biden and his administration provided an update on the actions they’ve taken to supposedly reduce gun crime and violence. You can see the Feb 3, 2022 White House speech and remarks from this Thursday here. The Biden Administration is hellbent on making themselves look more important and productive than they actually are. During the press briefing, multiple members of the Administration came out to speak against gun violence and steps the Administration is beginning to take to curb it— the biggest news was that they have begun training and moving law enforcement members to begin specifically targeting 80 percents and all those who sell or own unfinished frames or receivers. We already knew this though, since the Biden Administration informed the public last year that they planned on expanding the ATF’s force and started multiple “Strike Forces” against illegal firearms trafficking in five major cities.

Now, they’re also launching a “National ‘Ghost Gun’ Enforcement Initiative,” which is going to provide tools and teach prosecutors across the country to bring cases against those who use these products to commit crimes; such as the “Iron Pipeline” which is what they’re calling an illegal flow of guns sold in the south, transported up the East Coast and found at crime scenes in cities from Baltimore to New York City. Yet another example of the government using the excuse of criminals’ actions to make the law-abiding citizens suffer instead. 

Meanwhile, inflation is at an all time high, supply chains are still a mess and all Biden wants to do is throw money at every problem. Biden’s raised the debt ceiling to another new high, proliferated our southern border crisis, is asking Congress for money to hire more police officers in cities and states (because not enough people want to do the job anymore or are getting let go for being unvaccinated) — and now we’re looking at TikTok jokes about whether WWIII is kicking off either in Ukraine or Taiwan depending on Biden’s response to either Russia or China’s actions. So what are they doing to distract the masses from our financial and political woes? They’re trying to redirect all concerns to issues of safety and so called “gun violence.” Funny, who allowed these situations to happen in the first place?

ATF Releases Enforcement Date for redefining frames, receivers and pistol brace legality

If you remember the ATF 2021R-05 “NPRM”(new proposed rulemaking) that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released last year which made several headlines due to the craziness of what they were proposing in their desire to “redefine” how a firearm or related parts were legally defined. There was also 2021R-08 which touched on stabilizing braces and the definition of the firearms that use them.

Just as a quick refresher, 2021R-05 is the ATF's way of saying they'd like to make it harder for us to acquire firearm parts as they'd redefine parts such as upper receivers and perhaps start considering those as firearms too just as lower receivers currently are. This would mean upper receivers would need serialization as well, and while we, ourselves are not lawyers one can infer from the plethora of information out there. This new proposed rule would include 80 percent frames and lower receivers as well so that they would become completely regulated and treated as a 100% firearm would. It also made it clear that they did not want just anyone to working on or building their own firearms either as many gunsmiths would have to start paying a fee to the ATF to legally offer their services.  

For 2021R-08, it isn't about whether you can shoulder a pistol brace or not; it's a much higher altitude issue. This new proposed rule aims to begin using a check off sheet with a points based system. If your AR pistol build scores too high of a number based on the ATF's definitions of what is kosher and what is not, then surprise, it doesn't matter that you have a stabilizing brace. You now have a SBR and would be considered a felon for owning it without having the proper documentation and NFA tax stamp for it. 

Well, at the start of this week, the ATF released an update through the Federal Register (Vol. 87 No. 20) on when they’d be implementing their new rules which can be viewed on the Federal Register website. We don't have exact dates but 2021R-05 will begin to be enforced sometime in June of this year (2022). As for 2021R-08, it will begin being enforced sometime in August of this year as well. Our hope is that the government has given themselves four to six months to somehow back pedal from this to something more reasonable. Until then, pressure your elected representatives to get some answers for this! What does the ATF or DOJ plan on doing? Will they really allow millions of American to become criminals overnight for simple possession of certain AR parts and accessories? 

ATF’s Not So Secret Gun Registry Exposed

The gun community has been concerned by this issue for years and we’ve been called crazy conspiracy theorists for it but now the veil has been removed and there's sort of this feeling of being officially vindicated. A great explanation and succinct summary of this new development can be found on Mrgunsngear’s Youtube channel, but first some context:

For all FFL's (Federal Firearm Licensee holder) they are required to maintain 20 years' worth of transactional records. Namely, this refers to the 4473 DROS (Dealer Record of Sale) Form. However, if an FFL ever went out of business those past 20 years’ worth of records would have to be turned over to the ATF. Whether your state is a point of contact for the NICS system or not doesn’t matter. The point is that when you submit a 4473 Form to purchase a firearm, it’s getting sent either to the FBI or your state’s DOJ; one or two locations which are going to have a copy of your information with the fact that you are trying to purchase a firearm or alludes to the fact that you own multiple guns.

To briefly go back in time, in 2016 The Trace, an antigun media group funded by Michael Bloomberg, covered a story on how the ATF’s storage worked and what came from that was that the public found out the ATF was digitizing records in a searchable database which was expressly illegal. So Congress ordered them to delete it. The ATF claims that they did and re-uploaded them in a way that “wasn’t searchable.” The reason they were initially digitizing the records was because they had so many paper records of 4473’s that their office floors actually collapsed. Congress permitted this as long as the newly uploaded files were “not searchable.”

Up until now, the ATF has claimed that they do not have the capability to “search these files.” But come on, any middle school student has the basic level understanding to know that when you have a collection of digital files on virtually any operating system, cloud based storage, or what have you, it doesn't take much to know how to CTRL-F or CMD-F to search for a John Doe and his untold collection of guns. Even if it was true that the server system the ATF is using to archive these digital files are not currently searchable, it would not be difficult to create the ability to turn it into a searchable database within an extremely short amount of time. During this event in 2016, the ATF deleted 252 million files per orders from Congress. So that’s the context behind this newsworthy event and the overall gun community’s concern with this situation. Here’s the news:

In 2021, our allied politicians got curious because it was reported that the ATF had collected over 50 million records in that year alone so 52 Congressmen demanded to know how many files were being managed by the ATF in total and they got their answer; 920,664,765 records. Of those records at least 865 million of them had already been digitized by November 2021. While not all of those records all refer to firearms, if we want to generously round up (which is easy because these numbers do not include all of those who obtained firearms through private party transactions), we’re talking about nearly a billion guns on a de facto gun registry. Hopefully, the same group of congressmen that demanded these answers also demand for some level of change.

Now, the key words to hone in on here are: gun registry.

Why do we, in the gun community, hate these words? A lot of people in the mainstream media make it seem like we throw a huge fuss about doing 4473 forms and that we should all have licenses in the same way everyone does for driving and owning an automobile. But no one is about to take my car away even with over 42,000 motor vehicle related deaths in 2021 right? Continuing on with using The Trace’s data, they claim there were 20,726 gun related deaths in 2021, which happens to be half the rate of automobile related mortality.

Since the beginning of the Modern Age of mankind, there has never been a confiscation of private citizens’ weapons without a registry of individuals who owned said weapons that predated the confiscation. Feel free to do your own world history research but some good Google searches might include The Sword Abolishment Edict in Japan of 1876. Similar stories prior and after this event in Japan could also be seen happening in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Red China, Cambodia, Kosovo, Great Britain, Australia and now parts of the United States as well. Go ahead and chew on that until next week but those past events are what we’re all ultimately trying to avoid repeating. 

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