Just a few weeks ago California gunowners dodged a legislative bullet meant to curb their right to bear arms in self-defense in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision tossing out the “may-issue” concealed carry permitting system in New York, which also upended California’s own requirement that applicants demonstrate a “good cause” for carrying a firearm in self-defense. Legislation that would have largely mirrored New York’s post-Bruen carry restrictions failed by a single vote on the last day of California’s legislative session, though Gov. Gavin Newsom and anti-gun lawmakers have vowed to bring the legislation back at the first possible opportunity.
Given the fact that a federal judge has already said that many portions of New York’s ironically named Concealed Carry Improvement Act are likely unconstitutional, are California lawmakers really ready to double down and approve similar restrictions in the Golden State? Unfortunately, the answer is “yes,” though California Attorney General Rob Bonta suggested in an interview this week that the California legislation could be tweaked in response to the New York case. One thing is clear, however: Bonta and other anti-gun Democrats are still intent on restricting the right to carry as much as they possibly can.
Bonta said his sense of urgency remains as acute as ever.
“There will be, and there have been huge spikes in the number of applicants,” he said. “We believe that it’s important to have a constitutional regime that allows for those who should constitutionally have a concealed carry weapon to have (one), but to take the steps to make sure that we are doing everything constitutionally permissible to keep people safe.”
“Keep people safe,” in Bonta’s view, means prohibiting concealed carry holders from actually carrying in most circumstances and ensuring stiff sentences and severe consequences for those concealed carry holders who may stray into one of the many “gun-free zones” Bonta and his anti-gun allies want to put in place. And even if the courts don’t look kindly on New York’s newest infringements on the Second Amendment, California’s AG is intent on putting new laws on the books.
Bonta echoed comments made by the bill’s author, state Sen. Anthony Portantino, a Glendale Democrat, who said that he would like to see the bill, or some version of it, introduced as soon as the next session begins in December.
That plan hit a possible speed bump late last month. Where California’s bill failed, a similar proposal in New York was signed into law, only for a federal judge to rule this month that its long list of “sensitive places” is unconstitutional.
“So we need to look at that, and maybe it is over-broad,” Bonta said, “and we should take that to heart…and respond appropriately with any new (similar) bill.”
Bonta was also asked about California’s new law that, in part, forces plaintiffs challenging any state-level gun control law to pay attorneys fees if they lose any portion of their lawsuit; a law enacted as a response to a Texas law allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers in the state. The California AG seemed to realize just how stupid this culture war fight really is, calling the move a “dangerous game” but claiming that somehow it’s okay when California does it.
Bonta insisted that the law is an earnest effort to “save lives,” but also acknowledged that it was meant to call the high court’s bluff.
“We’re using it in the best way that it can be used, in a way that advances California values,” he said. “But it’s dangerous. It’s a dangerous game. We’re using it responsibly. Now others can use it like Texas, and maybe the Supreme Court will look at the landscape of how this approach is being used and try to correct it. If that happens, that’s fine, too.”
Not exactly a stirring defense of the California law in question, is it? I’m sure the Second Amendment groups that are challenging the law in court will find Bonta’s comments very interesting, especially since it seems like Bonta’s basically asking the Supreme Court to step in and invalidate both the Texas and California statutes.
While Bonta might not be too eager to defend this particular law in court, he’s very much a willing participant in California Democrats’ attempt to chill the Second Amendment rights of Californians. Bonta can chalk that up to “advancing California values,” but to those trying to exercise their right to keep and bear arms Bonta’s efforts look a lot more like treading all over a fundamental right of we the people.
When Congress authorized $80 billion this year to beef up Internal Revenue Service enforcement and staffing, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy invoked the language of war to warn that “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you.”
A video quickly went viral racking up millions of views, purporting to show a bunch of clumsy bureaucrats receiving firearms training, prompting alarm that the IRS would be engaged in military-style raids of ordinary taxpayers. The GOP claims were widely attacked as exaggerations – since the video, though from the IRS, didn’t show official agent training – but the criticism has shed light on a growing trend: the rapid arming of the federal government.
A report issued last year by the watchdog group Open The Books, “The Militarization of The U.S. Executive Agencies,” found that more than 200,000 federal bureaucrats now have been granted the authority to carry guns and make arrests – more than the 186,000 Americans serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. “One hundred three executive agencies outside of the Department of Defense spent $2.7 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between fiscal years 2006 and 2019 (inflation adjusted),” notes the report. “Nearly $1 billion ($944.9 million) was spent between fiscal years 2015 and 2019 alone.”
The watchdog reports that the Department of Health and Human Services has 1,300 guns including one shotgun, five submachine guns, and 189 automatic firearms. NASA has its own fully outfitted SWAT team, with all the attendant weaponry, including armored vehicles, submachine guns, and breeching shotguns. The Environmental Protection Agency has purchased drones, GPS trackers, radar equipment, and night vision goggles, in addition to stockpiling firearms.
A 2018 Government Accountability Office report noted that the IRS had 4,487 guns and 5,062,006 rounds of ammunition in inventory at the end of 2017 – before the enforcement funding boost this year. The IRS did not respond to requests for information, though the IRS’ Criminal Investigation division does put out an annual report detailing basic information such as how many warrants the agency is executing in a given year.
Yet more than a hundred executive agencies have armed investigators, and there doesn’t appear to be any independent authority actively monitoring or tracking the use of force across the federal government.
When asked about the need for such lethal materiel, agency officials typically speak only in general terms about security concerns. Agencies contacted by RealClearInvestigations from HHS to EPA declined to provide, or said they did not have, comprehensive statistics on how often their firearms are used, or details on how they conduct armed operations.
“I would be amazed if that data exists in any way,” said Trevor Burrus, a research fellow in constitutional and criminal law at the libertarian CATO Institute. “Over the years of working on this, it’s quite shocking how much they try to not have their stuff tracked on any level.”
Abigail Blanco, an economics professor at the University of Tampa, and the co-author of “Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism,” told RCI that the militarization of the federal government appears to track closely with the increased militarization of local police.
Blanco cites data in her book from criminologist Peter Kraska, who found that about 20% of small-town police departments had SWAT-style teams in the mid-1980s, deployed about 3,000 times annually. After the creation of a federal program in 1997 to arm local police with surplus military equipment, about 90% of small-town police departments had SWAT teams by the early 2000s and those units were being deployed 45,000 times annually. Current estimates suggest those SWAT teams are deployed as many as 80,000 times a year.
By and large, the arming of the federal bureaucracy is a relatively recent phenomenon: Some 74,500 federal agents had firearm authority in 1996, a number that has nearly tripled since then. Some of the increase is due to agencies taking responsibility for the security of their own buildings. The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, did not have a police force in 1995, but by 2018 it had nearly 4,000 armed officers, mostly dedicated to guarding the agency’s hospitals and other medical sites.
“We can all understand the dangerous world out there,” said Adam Andrzejewski, the CEO of Open The Books – and thus, he said, the need for some heavy weaponry in the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice. “But some of these other agencies, like Health and Human Services, they’ve got machine guns?”
Andrzejewski said that when he asked HHS about its arsenal, the agency spoke only in general terms about the dangers employees faced. It did not detail an increase in threats or provide specific examples of cases where such weapons would be required.
“Our investigations often involve undercover work, surveillance, as well as arrest and search warrants,” the agency said in a statement to Open The Books. “Our special agents have confiscated hundreds of firearms and arrested individuals who had direct access to firearms and other weapons. In order to keep our agents safe and allow them to do their jobs effectively, we use typical law enforcement equipment, including firearms and ballistic vests.”
All that weaponry raises questions about whether the 200,000 armed federal agents are getting adequate weapons and safety training. HHS did not respond to a request to comment on the $14 million in guns, ammunition, and military equipment it purchased between 2015 and 2019 or its new National Training Operations Center within the Washington, D.C. Beltway. There’s also another government agency – Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers – with locations in six states. That agency also declined to speak with RCI for this article.
According to Burrus of the Cato Institute, recent history helps explain the militarization of the federal government. “This is 20 years of the war on terror, with the production of an excessive amount of access to weaponry,” he says.
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 extended law enforcement authority to special agents of 24 Offices of Inspectors General in agencies throughout the government, with additional provisions to enable other OIGs to qualify for law enforcement authority. Though OIG offices are often thought of as being responsible for policing internal corruption at executive agencies, they are also tasked with conducting external criminal and civil investigations regarding the use of agency resources.
As a result, even obscure agencies such as the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board’s Office of Inspector General now have armed federal agents. This summer, before the expansion of the IRS was approved by Congress, Republican congressman Matt Gaetz specifically singled out the RRB as an example of the excesses of an armed bureaucracy when he introduced a bill to stop federal agencies from stockpiling ammunition.
The Railroad Retirement Board was the only federal agency to respond to RCI’s requests for comment for this article. Jill F. Roellig, a manager and program analyst at the RRB in Chicago, countered that the agency distributes $13 billion in retirement and health benefits each year. “As you know, with government payments, there’s fraud associated with it, and our job is to investigate those types of fraud cases,” she said. “[RRB agents] execute search warrants, do surveillance, they interview targets, they make arrests, they do all types of things that law enforcement agencies do in order to do oversight and fight fraud in the RRB’s programs. It’s a national program, as well.”
While fraud investigations might be an important part of RRB’s mission, the agency has had police powers for only 20 of the agency’s 87 years of existence. When asked, Roellig said she didn’t know how the agency conducted fraud investigations prior to 2002, but did note that the RRB’s investigators regularly worked with the FBI and law enforcement agencies.
Still, federal agencies doing their own criminal investigations raises important constitutional and civil rights questions that have never really been addressed. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency raided a number of small auto shops across the country for allegedly selling equipment that helped car owners circumvent emissions regulations. The auto shop owners say that the emissions equipment they were installing was part of the process of turning street legal cars into vehicles that are solely dedicated to being used on racetracks – an activity that’s not necessarily illegal.
“It was 12 armed federal agents, and they had little EPA badges on and everything,” John Lund, the owner of Lund Racing in West Chester, Pennsylvania, told the Washington Examiner. “They had a search warrant for conspiracy to sell defeat devices. They basically went around the building, and they did forensics — physical forensics, digital forensics on the laptops, and we were compliant.”
The EPA’s aggressive enforcement of emissions standards for race cars, resulting in at most civil fines, prompted Republican Rep. Patrick Henry of North Carolina to introduce the RPM Act (short for Recognizing the Protection of Motorsports Act) to clarify the legality of emissions rules on race cars. The bill attracted 133 co-sponsors – including 30 Democrats.
The bill was first introduced in 2016, when a House oversight committee held a hearing titled “Racing to Regulate: EPA’s Latest Overreach on Amateur Drivers.” Six years later, the RPM Act is still languishing in Congress – prompting a visit from racing legend Richard Petty in July to lobby for the bill.
The EPA did not respond a request for comment, but last year the agency issued a brief statement defending the raids on the auto shops: “Our agents are necessarily armed when they investigate persons alleged to have knowingly violated the law, and our investigations are often conducted in the company of local/state law enforcement and pursuant to judicially approved subpoenas.”
While it’s hardly a new complaint that federal bureaucracies are overstepping their rulemaking authority and usurping congress’ legislative powers, the idea that executive agencies are broadly empowered to effectively create their own laws and go out and enforce them with armed federal agents is another matter.
“So many of the regulations that can be enforced at the point of a gun have almost nothing to do with what people would normally call dangerous crime, that would be the kind of thing where you might want armed agents there,” said Burrus. “And especially coming from agencies such as the EPA and other agencies that are more quality-of-life agencies dealing with regulatory infractions, rather than involved in solving real crimes.”
Critics say allowing federal agencies to perform their own law enforcement removes an important layer of accountability that existed when unarmed federal investigators were forced to cooperate with local authorities.
“If there’s a dispute the EPA has with a rancher where they want to come in with armed agents, you’re much better off coming in with a local sheriff who is probably familiar with the person in the situation,” says Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute. “With the sheriff you have an independent person if something goes wrong. Otherwise, you’re taking the word of this government agency, where the law enforcement mechanism is the same as the bureaucracy that’s alleging the violations. It’s a real opportunity for damaging people’s rights in a major way.”
– – –
Mark Hemingway reports on the key institutions shaping public life, from lobbying groups to federal agencies to elections, for RealClearInvestigations. His writing has appeared in USA Today, Wall Street Journal, MTV.com, and The Weekly Standard.
With the benefit of hindsight, Terrion Pouncy should have just paid for his hot dog.
One of the best vacations my family and I ever took was to Chicago. We did the museums, wandered about taking in the sights, and ate some great food. Unfortunately, several decades of left-wing governance have taken their inevitable toll. As anyone who has watched the news will tell you, Chicago has a bit of a violence problem these days.
Despite some fairly restrictive gun control laws an awful lot of people are still getting shot in Chicago.
It’s pretty tough to buy a legal gun in Chicago, though the illegal sort apparently litter the place. Until recent times, the Windy City had no gun shops. There are a few now, but you still have to have special cards, government permission, and similar stuff to obtain a weapon legally. Despite all that, in 2020 there were 780 murders in Chicago. Over the July 4th weekend in 2021 more than 100 people were shot. Tragically, eighteen perished.
Jackson, Mississippi, where I went to med school, is one of the most violent cities in America.
Per capita, Chicago is far from the worst. In 2020 they had about 25 murders per 100,000 people. I’m disappointed to report that the reigning champion that year was actually Jackson, Mississippi, with a murder rate of roughly twice that. Our sordid tale this day takes us through both places.
My Credentials
Most small towns in the Deep South are delightfully safe and pleasant. Mine certainly is.
I live in a small town in the Deep South today. A great many folks are armed, and, with blessed few exceptions, everybody is friendly. Crimes of violence are quite unusual. Property crime happens from time to time, but thankfully that’s rare, too.
Jackson, Mississippi, was a great place to go to med school.
I learned to be a doctor in Jackson, Mississippi, apparently per capita one of the most violent places in the country. I would assert that this was also the best place on the planet to learn medicine. The facility and faculty were indeed both top flight, but that wasn’t the secret to a stellar medical education. Jackson was a great place to learn medicine because of the patients.
This guy is from Mexico. Being really big brings a whole host of medical challenges.
That part of Mississippi is one of the most morbidly obese places on planet earth. It is a uniquely modern phenomenon that our poor people are fat. With such profoundly poor diets and a dearth of exercise come scads of metabolic maladies. Diabetes and hypertension were ubiquitous, and there was a thin scattering of venereal disease sprinkled over the top as well.
Amidst a simply breathtaking pantheon of stupid things human beings have done, smoking has got to be the stupidest. Sucking these ghastly rascals is a great way to die horribly.
My patients routinely neglected to do what I asked of them. We often discussed stuff like diet and exercise, but that was clearly more for my benefit than theirs. Oftentimes some enormous Jacksonian endured my spiel about the many-splendored dangers of fast food, cigarettes, and a sedentary lifestyle before departing my clinic determined not to change a blessed thing.
The patient population in the ER in Jackson was shockingly violent.
Lastly, in their free time my patients not infrequently shot each other. I never did a shift in the ER at the Level 1 trauma center where I trained without at least one gunshot wound. My personal record was seven. However, those sordid attributes also made it a great place to learn. Once I hung out my shingle in a normal place with moms, dads, and patients who heeded my advice, being an effective doctor seemed relatively breezy.
Profiling
This is Terrion Pouncy. Terrion made some poor life choices.
Terrion Pouncy was a thug. While I have not had the pleasure of meeting Terrion myself, I have indeed met many like him. At risk of being labeled whatever it is you get labeled with these days for simply describing the world as it is, here’s what these guys are like up close.
Of course, modern-day gangs have an online presence. It’s amazing what Google will find for you when you go looking.
These are the gladiators. They’re often exceptionally fit and typically covered in gang tats. They are invariably combative and belligerent when they present to the emergency department acutely shot. I mean, who wouldn’t be? However, once you save their lives and get them out of that environment they’re most commonly quite friendly. I have had some of the most delightful conversations with these guys as they recuperated after surgery.
Behold the rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. This is what passes for role models among poor inner city kids these days. Is it any wonder so many of them turn out poorly?
None of them had dads, and their moms often stayed in the rooms with them. These long-suffering ladies did the best they could considering, but there aren’t a whole lot of positive role models in that world. These guys gravitate toward crime, drugs, and violence in an effort at escaping their dreadful circumstances.
Occupational Hazards
This is the hot dog shop where Terrion Pouncy had his date with destiny.
At 6 am on a chilly November day in 2017, Terrion Pouncy approached a 24-hour hotdog stand at 11656 South Halsted Street in the West Pullman neighborhood in Chicago. The stand was manned by a pair of unidentified guys aged 39 and 45. Terrion was dressed in a dark hooded sweatshirt pulled up over his head. He had a similarly dark scarf that concealed his face.
In the covid era, modern criminals seem to be exceptionally responsible about wearing face coverings. This gentleman’s stripped-down polymer-framed AR pistol is curiously devoid of sights.
These were the days before covid, so facial coverings were not quite as commonplace as is the case today. Surveillance videos posted on YouTube demonstrate that modern criminals are exceptionally conscientious about mask-wearing. Regardless, it was cold and dark, so Terrion likely got pretty close before the hot dog guys grew suspicious.
Terrion’s .38-caliber pistol likely looked something like this.
Pouncy approached the two men, produced a .38-caliber handgun, and demanded the money in the cash register. The younger of the two victims readily complied. However, this man was also holding a bucket of hot grease at the time. As he fumbled for the cash in the register he accidentally dropped the bucket, spilling hot grease liberally across the floor.
This is Arlando Henderson. Arlando stole $88,000 in cash from the bank where he worked and then posted pictures of himself flashing the money on social media. I’m sure the FBI appreciated the help.
Terrion lustily grabbed the cash, most of it in ones, and started shoving it into his pants. Before departing, Terrion availed himself of the man’s wallet and cell phone as well. All this was captured on surveillance video.
It’s easy to suffer from task overload during an armed robbery. To keep from shooting yourself through the penis it is best to slow down and do it right.
As Pouncy turned to jog away he stuffed his handgun back into his waistband and slipped on the spilled grease. Unfortunately, his hands were full, and he was in a rush. The trigger caught on something, and the gun went off. This is where Terrion’s morning took an unexpectedly dark turn.
Maxwell Street Express seems pretty nice. When Terrion Pouncy tried to rob the place things did not end well for him.
Pouncy ran down the street to an abandoned car wash now bleeding vigorously. There he was seen throwing something, presumably his weapon, over a fence. He then called 911 and reported that he had been shot.
The geometry of gunshot wounds is often quite surprising.
First responders found Pouncy with a through-and-through gunshot wound to his penis and another to his thigh. Both injuries were clearly from the same round. The cops later found his discarded hoodie and weapon. The younger of the two robbery victims discovered his wallet near the spot where the ambulance retrieved the freshly neutered criminal.
Terrion did not do his future any favors when he tried to rob a local hot dog joint.
Pouncy was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn and admitted. While there he missed his initial hearing, so Judge Stephanie Miller ordered him held without bond. I bet hers is a simply fascinating job. Despite an aggressive Google search, I never could find out what became of poor Terrion. Even if they just let him go, the argument could be made that he has already been punished adequately.
Closer to Home
The ER in Jackson, Mississippi, was a thrill a minute.
I myself had a similar encounter while working in the ER in Jackson. A young unlicensed pharmacist got sideways with a competitor, and they both slapped leather. This guy’s Hi-Point 9mm went off on the draw stroke, centerpunching his male member mid-shaft but fortuitously missing everything else. His opponent apparently felt that justice had been adequately served and abandoned him bleeding on the sidewalk.
Ambulance crews play a critical role in keeping people alive long enough to get to the hospital.
This guy was justifiably unsettled when we met, but the paramedics had gotten much of the bleeding staunched enroute. We packaged him up for the Urology residents who were thrilled to get an interesting surgical case. When your world orbits around bladder cancer and inflamed prostate glands a good old-fashioned gunshot wound to the shlong is a reliable crowd-pleaser.
Some folks’ lifestyle choices make them frequent customers in the ER.
I actually saw that guy for something else some months later and he offered to let me take a peek at his offended member. It had indeed healed nicely, no doubt a tribute to the rarefied skill of our resident Urologists. It did, however, cock off at a jaunty angle around mid-shaft. Our hero was thrilled to report that it still functioned as intended. He explained that his injury might have even made him more popular with the local ladies based solely upon the novelty of the thing. Thank goodness he could still reproduce.
The Gun
Despite its modest price, the Hi-Point C9 is quite a serviceable weapon.
I write for the gun press, and I proudly own a Hi-Point pistol. Those who denigrate the performance of these inexpensive guns have clearly not logged a great deal of trigger time on one. My Hi-Point shoots quite well.
Hi-Point carbines are mechanically similar to their C9 handguns.
Originally launched in 1992, Hi-Point produces inexpensive, reliable firearms. Their catalog includes both pistols and carbines in a variety of calibers. All of their weapons are based upon the straight blowback operating system. This design mandates an unusually heavy slide.
The big bulky slide on the Hi-Point C9 is necessary to counteract recoil given its blowback method of operation.
Hi-Point slides are die cast from an inexpensive zinc alloy called Zamak-3. The frames are steel-reinforced polymer. Ancillary bits demanding gun-grade strength are cut from steel as well. The aesthetic result looks like a blow dryer had a baby with an electric toaster.
In the wrong hands, the Hi-Point C9 remains quite effective.
The single action trigger on the Hi-Point is a bit mushy but quite serviceable. The gun’s single-stack magazines are relatively easy to swap, and the safety is intuitive. One of the red dots on my rear sight fell out, but Hi-Point pistols shoot plenty straight. Mine has also been unflinchingly reliable. The bulk of the slide makes concealment a chore, but that doesn’t mean that literally countless young thugs haven’t successfully pulled it off. My Hi-Point C9 set me back $46 without a magazine from a Law Enforcement auction.
Ruminations
Prison looks like fun and all, but it’s still better to just work hard and obey the law than to make one’s way via a life of crime.
So if you were pondering a life of petty crime let me encourage you to seek out a career elsewhere. The money can be good, and the tax burden is admittedly minimal. However, Terrion Pouncy can no doubt attest that the occupational hazards far outweigh the potential rewards. Nobody wants to be shot in the Johnson no matter how much easy cash rides on the enterprise.
SPRINGFIELD, VA-(Ammoland.com)- When the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) told Representative Michael Cloud’s (R-TX) office that it held nearly one billion out of business records, Gun Owners of America (GOA) called it an illegal gun registry. The legacy media newspaper, USA Today, issued a “fact check” stating that the claim was false. Now thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by GOA and Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), we know how much of a role the ATF played in determining the rating.
Last January, the ATF answered an inquire by Rep Cloud’s office stating that it held nearly one billion records in its Out of Business Office in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The vast majority of the records were digitized, and the ATF’s Firearms Trace Center had access to the documents. Although the ATF claims the records are not searchable by anything other than the former federal firearms licensee (FFL) name, by just selecting a few options in the software, those records could be usable by using optical character recognition (OCR).
A new FOIA request by GOA and GOF shows the communication between the USA Today fact checker, ATF’s former Chief of the Public Affairs Division, April Langwell, and former ATF Associate Deputy Director Thomas Chittum. Mr. Chittum has left the ATF to work for ShotSpotter. Ms. Langwell also recently left the ATF to work as the Director of Communications for the United States Marine Corp (USMC).
In the exchange, the unnamed fact-checker asked about the alleged registry. Ms. Langwell and Mr. Chittum denied the existence of the gun registry. Mr. Chittum replied that there was no firearms registry and handed off the conversation to Ms. Langwell. Ms. Langwell repeated the claim that the database is only searchable by FFL name. She stated that the ATF doesn’t consider the digitally scanned records to be a gun registry. The fact checker did not follow up on how easy it would be to turn on optical character recognition. The fact checker seemed to accept Ms. Langwell’s claims at face value.
The issue the fact checker overlooked is that according to the email exchange, the records are stored in PDF format. The PDF file format is the product of Adobe. Adobe Acrobat is needed to read the documents in the file format. The ability to OCR documents is built into Adobe Acrobat and can be applied to a PDF in as little as two clicks.
The ATF also told USA Today that all records had been digitized as of 2017. This claim contradicts what the ATF told Congressman Michael Cloud (R-TX). The fact checker did ask Ms. Langwell about the discrepancy. The ATF repeated the claim to the fact checker that the ATF completed the move to a digital format in 2017. The fact checker never followed up on why the ATF told USA Today something different than what the Bureau told Congress. Someone received the wrong information from the ATF, and it is unclear who has the incorrect information.
GOF and GOA were deeply troubled by USA Today’s “fact checking” methods. They point out that the paper discounted the mountains of evidence and the ATF’s own statements on the matter.
“ATF openly admitted to USA Today that ‘scanning out of business records began in 2005’ and now ATF ‘processes an average of 5.5 million’ records containing private gun and owner information into its database per month,” said Aidan Johnston, Director of Federal Affairs, Gun Owners of America. “We are disappointed that this ‘journalist’ simply reported ATF’s denial of an illegal gun registry as truth, without any critical thinking whatsoever.”
USA Today did not respond to AmmoLand’s request for comment.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
Last summer, Governor Gavin Newsom expressed outrage over a Texas law he found objectionable. In fact, Mr. Newsom was so incensed that he bought billboards outside California to air his frustrations (and annoy potential national political rivals). Then, he decided to copy that law and aim it at something he found even more objectionable: gun culture. He even tipped the scales to make sure those who object would be at a distinct disadvantage.
Last week, CRPA filed suit to roll back the most insidious aspect of Mr. Newsom’s gambit. In the complaint, CRPA and a host of plaintiffs point out not only the logical fallacies behind the Governor’s ill-fated attack, but the many reasons that the law is patently unconstitutional. Making those who challenge new Second Amendment restrictions pay all legal costs unless they win EVERY argument in their case while the state can recover their costs if they win ANY part of their case is, of course, in direct violation of the Constitution (not to mention all sense of fairness).
In this case, the Governor wants to use a law he himself views as outrageous to attack your rights. The Constitution is not a vehicle for wannabe Presidential candidates to send messages to rivals.
When I was a kid, the FBI was the agency of countless heroes of television and film. As a kid who loved both, the FBI represented the good guys in my mind. It stayed that way for ages, too, because while the ATF or DEA might have done some shady stuff to make arrests, I could trust the FBI would do the right thing.
The privacy invasion was vast when FBI agents drilled and pried their way into 1,400 safe-deposit boxes at the U.S. Private Vaults store in Beverly Hills.
They rummaged through personal belongings of a jazz saxophone player, an interior designer, a retired doctor, a flooring contractor, two Century City lawyers and hundreds of others.
Agents took photos and videos of pay stubs, password lists, credit cards, a prenuptial agreement, immigration and vaccination records, bank statements, heirlooms and a will, court records show. In one box, agents found cremated human remains.
Eighteen months later, newly unsealed court documents show that the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles got their warrant for that raid by misleading the judge who approved it.
They omitted from their warrant request a central part of the FBI’s plan: Permanent confiscation of everything inside every box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.
The FBI’s justification for the dragnet forfeiture was its presumption that hundreds of unknown box holders were all storing assets somehow tied to unknown crimes, court records show.
So they just assumed everyone who used what amounted to a safe deposit box was doing so for illicit reasons? They thought the private vault company was shady and suspect it of being involved in criminal undertakings, but it’s clear they acted as if literally everyone who used it was criminal as well.
“But Tom, this is a Second Amendment site. What does that have to do with guns, gun rights, or gun control?” you might ask; quite fairly, to be honest.
My point in bringing this up is simple. If the FBI honestly thought they could get away with something like this by apparently and essentially lying to the judge, why would anyone believe law enforcement wouldn’t lie to a judge to, say, get a red flag order issued?
Similar to how the order in this case was issued, red flag orders don’t require the judge to talk to the individual. All police really have to do is tell the judge that you’re a threat for whatever reason and poof! There go your gun rights.
Oh, you might get them back, but how long will you have to wait? Why should you have to wait?
Look, I still remain convinced that most law enforcement just wants to catch actual bad guys. However, sometimes they get fixated on the wrong things, and sometimes those who go into law enforcement are the bad guys. They’re human, with all that entails.
If they’ll lie to essentially steal $86 million in private property and claim they just might be involved in some unknown criminal activity, why should anyone trust any of their rights to a system that could yank them away just as easily?
The ATF “brace amnesty” is a study of how a bureaucracy can maneuver around elected officials, in this case, to ban and register pistol-braced firearms. You either cough up all data on yourself and your gun or face jail and exorbitant fines.
September 30, 2022By David Codrea
“The Biden-Harris Administration and the ATF are cracking down on your right to own a pistol,” Gun Owners of America declares. “The upcoming ‘Amnesty Registration’ rule for pistol braces will facilitate the banning and registration of millions of pistol-braced weapons.”
Owners will be faced with two choices, GOA warns, “Give the ATF your name, Social Security number, address, phone number, email, payment information, FINGERPRINTS, as well as the make, model, and serial number of your firearm – and provide photographic evidence of your compliance OR Face jail time and pay a $250,000 fine.”
Our Story Thus Far
How things got to this point is a case study in the Bureau usurping powers to effectively “legislate” through often contradictory rule changes. Nowhere has this been more apparent than with braces, and ATF’s on again/off again reversals on their “legality.”
“ATF initially welcomed the advent of pistol arm braces,” Rep. Matt Gaetz noted in a June 2020 letter cosigned by half-a-dozen Republican colleagues and sent to ATF, to then Attorney General William Barr (see Firearms News, Aug. 2020, Issue #15). “In 2012, ATF correctly determined that the attachment of arm braces to large pistol platforms does not constitute the manufacture of a short-barreled rifle … subject to registration requirements under the National Firearms Act…”
They repeated that assessment in a 2014 advisory to a Colorado police department, noting “certain firearm accessories such as the SIG Stability Brace have not been classified by [Firearms Technology Branch] as shoulder stocks and, therefore, using the brace improperly does not constitute a design change.” Then in 2015, everything changed.
“Any person who intends to use a handgun stabilizing brace as a shoulder stock on a pistol (having a rifled barrel under 16 inches in length or a smooth bore firearm with a barrel under 18 inches in length) must first file an ATF Form 1 and pay the applicable tax because the resulting firearm will be subject to all provisions of the NFA,” ATF declared in its “Open Letter on the Redesign of ‘Stabilizing Braces.”
Not so, a 2017 press release from SB Tactical asserted. “To the extent that the January 2015 Open Letter implied or has been construed to hold that incidental, sporadic, or situational ‘use’ of an arm-brace (in its original approved configuration) equipped firearm from a firing position at or near the shoulder was sufficient to constitute ‘redesign,’ such interpretations are incorrect and not consistent with ATF’s interpretation of the statute or the manner in which it has historically been enforced.’”
“Unbeknownst to the general public, ATF has ordained in private determination letters that it considers ‘any firearm with a length of pull over 13-1/2 inches to be designed to be fired from the shoulder,’ thereby making it a short-barreled rifle,” Gaetz continued in his letter. “However, ATF has also privately proclaimed that even firearms under this length of pull can be classified as a short-barreled rifle, if ATF identifies other (and often unspecified) applicable ‘indicators.’”
So why all the back-and-forth, and why is ATF getting ready to pull this new and unheard of “amnesty” now? Recalling the vulgar joke about why a dog licks itself, the answer here seems to be the same: Because they can.
But Can They? Really?
“NFA Division personnel will use the information collection on ATF Form 1 to determine the legality of the application under Federal, State and local law,” ATF states in its Office of Management and Budget Justification.
“Oh my, this may break the NFRTR [National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record],” a friend and colleague responded in an email group of firearms and firearms law advisors I regularly corresponded with. We’re basically a group that compares notes, offers insights and occasionally acts in concert, prompting U.S. attorneys defending ATF against one of our Freedom of Information Act requests to disparage and dismiss us as “a tangled web of connections between a small cadre of firearms activists…”
ATF’s OMB Supporting Statement assumes its “total annual IC [information collection] burden is 102,808 hours.” That’s 2,570 40-hour weeks.
“In fiscal year (FY) 2020, ATF had 5,082 employees, including 2,653 special agents and 760 industry operations investigators,” ATF notes. How many of those will be put on Brace duty to clear out the backlog is unclear, especially since before this all the rage has been to complain about how they’re understaffed and take forever to perform traces because the mean old Republicans won’t let them put everything into one big registration database (allegedly necessitating some creative cellphone camera work by lawbreaking inspectors caught on video snapping bound book pics).
Is Help on the Way?
“The President has already proposed to increase funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) by 13% so ATF can hire new agents and investigators,” the White House announced in July as part of its “The Safer America Plan.” So, what are we really talking about in terms of making all this doable?
“Currently, there are at least four million braced pistols in the United States,” investigative journalist John Crump writes on AmmoLand. Crump is the reporter who broke this story after he uncovered and analyzed ATF’s budget request. His number estimate comports with ATF’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which claims “Anecdotal evidence from the manufacturers of the affected ‘stabilizing braces’ indicates that the manufacturers have sold between 3 million and 7 million ‘stabilizing braces’ between the years 2013 to 2020 or over the course of eight years. For the purposes of this analysis, ATF uses 3 million as the low estimate and primary estimate of affected ‘stabilizing braces.’”
“It remains to be seen if the system can withstand millions of additional form submissions,” Crump observes. “This influx of millions of new applications for the ATF Pistol Brace registration would also backlog any other forms submitted through the same processing.”
GOA, for its part, kicks that number up by an order of magnitude, noting “According to the ATF itself, completing a Form 1 takes approximately four hours. That means, the owners of up to 40,000,000 braced weapons will spend up to a collective 160,000,000 hours registering their lawfully acquired firearms … “
“The ATF reportedly processed 512,315 National Firearms Act forms in 2020,” GOA relates from ATF’s OMB statement. “At that rate – assuming no further backlog and assuming all affected gun owners comply with gun registration – it would take the ATF over 78 years to process all the pistol registration forms.”
“While there are no available statistics to gauge authoritatively the number of stabilizing braces already made and sold in the United States, unofficial estimates suggest that there are between 10 and 40 million stabilizing braces and similar components already in civilian hands, either purchased as accessories or already attached to firearms made at home or at the factory,” the report states. Since CRS is the Library of Congress’ official research group working “primarily and directly for members of Congress and their committees and staff,” GOA chose to use the same data lawmakers rely on.
Noting how the citizen disarmament powers-that-be operate, it’s not out of line to anticipate worst-case scenarios where what they can get today metastasizes into “everything” tomorrow.
But There’s a Bigger Issue at Play
“MAYBE what it will do is get some Member(s) of Congress to request GAO to do a forensic audit of the NFRTR to determine its accuracy and reliability,” another one of my “small cadre” advisors chimed in, pointing out the elephant in the room that “amnesty” proponents don’t much want to talk about.
There is much to talk about, but there’s much to read about first. One data-and history-rich resource is the NFA Owners Association website, and for the purposes of this article, a new entry titled “Amnesty: Documents and ATF activities relevant to §207(b) and § 207(d) of the Gun Control Act of 1968” offers many relevant insights. Foremost among those is a 2005 CRS report (the research group discussed above) by analyst William J. Krouse titled “ATF’s National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record: Issues Regarding Data Accuracy, Completeness and Reliability.”
Or to put it in the vernacular: Garbage In/Garbage Out. And it’s been that way for a long time.
“We continuously discover discrepancies and inaccuracies in the registration file which, if discovered during trial, would destroy the future credibility of such evidence,” the then-NFA Branch Chief admitted in a 1975 internal memorandum. “If the court should discover that our negligence caused an unwarranted arrest and trial, the resultant loss of public trust would be irreparable.”
Things had not improved 20 years later when another NFA Branch Chief made a telling admission in an ATF “roll call” training session.
“Let me say that when we testify in court, we testify that the database (NFRTR) is 100% accurate. That’s what we testify to, and we will always testify to that,” he declared. “As you probably well know, that may not be 100% true.”
There’s a word for that, isn’t there? A legal term that starts with “p”…?
“Stephen Halbrook – an attorney who specializes in firearms law – has advised that in NFA-related criminal proceeedings the defense should file discovery motions for U.S. government documents… that he maintains cast a reasonable doubt as to whether the NFRTR database is accurate, complete, and reliable,” the CRS report noted.
Halbrook’s not the only one.
“In a major victory for those of us arguing that the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) is insufficient for criminal proceedings, Dr. Fritz Scheuren, ‘the’ statistician in the United States (possibly the world), today informed the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma … that the NFRTR is insufficient for criminal proceedings,” Prince Law Blog reported in 2008. “[T]his is a MAJOR defeat for the BATFE, who, over the years, has argued that although the NFRTR is flawed, it still can be used in criminal proceedings.”
That was the case of US v. Larry Douglas Friesen, pitting the feds against an Oklahoma City attorney and concealed carry course instructor accused of illegal machinegun possession and lying to authorities, with five counts returned by a grand jury and Friesen facing serious prison time if convicted.
The lies and inaccuracies cited above were brought to bear in the “Defendant’s Motion in Limine to Prohibit Government’s Introduction or Reference to Records Maintained in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.”
For those unfamiliar with the term, Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute tells us a Motion in Limine is “A pretrial motion asking that certain evidence be found inadmissible, and that it not be referred to or offered at trial.”
It worked, and an interested private citizen who had filed a FOIA request yielding much of the documentation the successful motion relied on — and incidentally, a “senior founding member” of our “small cadre” – tells Firearms News “Here’s the Motion in Limine that got four felonies plea bargained down to a single $25 misdemeanor.”
The government really doesn’t want this widely known.
It’s a Trap!
Admiral Ackbar’s famous epiphany from Star Wars is echoed by Washington Gun Law President and attorney William Kirk in a YouTube video asking “Is Pistol Brace Amnesty About to Become the Biggest Trap Ever Set?”
“When examining the plain language used by the ATF on three important ATF documents, we’ve come to not only a conclusion that many of you have arrived at already, but we think we know how the trap will be sprung,” Kirk claims in the video description. “If true, this will be one of the greatest acts of deceit by any modern government.”
How?
“The dots are connected from three documents,” Kirk explains, identifying the ATF Budget Request, ATF Form 1, Application to Make and Register a Firearm, “as it currently exists and what could be added to it,” and ATF “worksheet” Form 4999 (FACTORING CRITERIA FOR RIFLED BARREL WEAPONS WITH ACCESSORIES* commonly referred to as “STABILIZING BRACES”).
“That is the form that ATF is going to be used to score an AR pistol to determine is it really an AR pistol or a federally-regulated short barrel rifle, buying you a $200 tax stamp,” Kirk elaborates, noting how photos and fingerprints will be used in the determination of if a weapon qualifies for amnesty registration, and anticipating modification of Form 1 to accommodate the new requirements.
“When you submit all that information to ATF on what will clearly be the new and improved Form 1, ATF is going to run that firearm through its 4999 checklist, and if – and trust me, most of you will be in this category – if you score four points or more on the 4999, you are going to receive a letter from ATF saying ‘your firearm does NOT qualify for amnesty registration, you OWE us a $200 tax stamp, otherwise, you can forfeit the weapon.’”
“That, my friends, is the great trap that is being set by amnesty registration,” Kirk concludes, noting that rather than being “a wild conspiracy theory,” he is “taking the language directly form ATF’s Budget Request … taking language directly form ATF’s Form 1 and … taking the criteria directly from ATF’s 4999.”
After the trap is sprung, what then? By now, all informed gun owners have seen the reports and videos of ATF showing up at people’s houses without warrants asking to see guns they have records on. Look for that to increase and look for warrants going out on people they figure they now have “probable cause” to investigate.
Remember we are dealing with enforcers of infringements who are not above entrapment, and as we see from the history of NFRTR administration, cover-ups and outright perjury. If they do show up at our doors, let’s not forget the advice of Regent Law Professor James Duane in his video presentation wherein he gives probably the most important piece of legal advice a citizen approached by law enforcement will ever hear:
Columnist David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. In addition to being a regular featured contributor for Firearms Newshe blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter @dcodrea and Facebook.
