Category: Gun Info for Rookies
AmmoLand News partnered with data scientist Wes Scoggin to analyze the public comments on the proposed rule that would redefine who the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) considers a “gun dealer.”
The new rule is a backdoor to universal background checks. Anyone who sells a gun and makes a profit could potentially require a federal firearms license (FFL). Also, the ATF could consider anyone selling more than one of a single type of firearm to be a gun dealer. The ATF claims that the Bi-partisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) gives them the authority to change the rules surrounding dealers.
The BSCA was a bill passed through Congress with the support of Republicans such as John Cornyn and was signed into law by President Joe Biden. It has been the centerpiece of the President’s gun control agenda. Republicans ignored warnings from pro-gun groups that the Democrats would exploit the law.
The comment section of previously proposed ATF rules has been overwhelming pro-gun. This time, support of the proposed rule is lopsided in favor of the ATF change. Currently, over 96% of the comments implore the Government to enact the new rule.
The disparity between the comments for the proposed rule and those against the new rule could be for a few different reasons. One reason could be that gun owners do not believe their comments will make a difference. Although a great majority of public comments on the last two ATF rules opposed the changes, the ATF ignored many of the concerns and enacted new restrictions on the rights of Americans.
Mr. Scoggin and AmmoLand News investigated the comments to see why the statistics are so lopsided in favor of the new rule. The discovery shows that the vast majority of the comments favoring the ATF proposed rule were identical.
We tracked down the text of the comments to an Astroturf campaign by Brady United. Ninety-eight percent of the comments backing the change read:
“I strongly support the proposed rule to ensure that individuals who are ‘engaged in the business’ of selling firearms are licensed, thus requiring them to complete background checks for all firearm sales and maintain records of those transactions, and that dealers who have lost their licenses may no longer sell firearms to the public. A recent study found that more than 1 in 5 gun sales in the U.S. are conducted without a background check, amounting to millions of off-the-books gun transfers annually; many of these transactions are facilitated by individuals who profit from the repetitive sale of firearms yet avoid the necessary oversight required of licensed dealers.
“This is a public health and safety issue, and I urge the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to finalize the rule in order to prevent firearm transfers to prohibited purchasers and ensure that individuals who are selling guns for profit are licensed, regulated, and engage in responsible business practices.”
The anti-gun group launched an email campaign on September 9, which coincides with the bump to the pro-gun control comments.
The email contains a link that allows anyone on its mailing list to submit a comment to the Federal Register by just filling out their name and clicking a single button. Brady runs the campaign through a website plugin called “fastaction.” The whole process takes the user less than 30 seconds to complete.
“It seems that this go-round that the anti-gun organizations are showing up early to flood the comments on the new ATF docket,” Scoggin told AmmoLand. “With their ‘fastaction’ branded one-click comment scheme, it would seem there is an effort to outpace any opposing comments to the rule change.
There seemed to be an emerging trend at the end of last year’s public comment window for the Frame and Brace dockets. We saw a spike in what appeared to be canned responses from these same groups, and that seems to be the case from the very beginning of this docket posting last year in the gun-related docket comment periods that have accelerated from the beginning of the comment window.”
The rule will most likely happen no matter what the final statistics show. The danger of not commenting is that the Biden Administration will exploit the lopsidedness of the comments to argue in court that most Americans support the change. Even though interest balancing is supposed to be a thing of the past after the Bruen decision, judges might still be subconsciously or even consciously persuaded by the statistics.
Not all hope is lost. The comment period is still open, and gun owners can make their voices heard. AmmoLand News strongly encourages its readers to send a message to the ATF and the Biden Administration that the rule should not go into effect. We might not be able to stop the change, but we can take away a talking point from the anti-gun side and prevent the Brady Astroturf campaign from succeeding in cooking the books.
AmmoLand has prepared a comment that readers can submit to the ATF. If you choose to write your own comment, remember to stick to the facts, as they are always on gun owners’ side.
“I strongly oppose the proposed rule that redefines who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms. The new rule will burden American gun owners by creating a grey area where they can inadvertently break the law.
The new requirement circumvents Congress by creating a de facto universal background check rule. Congress has chosen to leave background check laws for private gun sales to the state governments. This rule will override the authority of the states with overburdensome federal regulations and strip state’s rights.
The regulation will not make us any safer. The vast majority of guns used in crimes are stolen. States that have enacted universal background checks did not see any reduction of crimes committed with firearms. I strongly encourage the government to work on real solutions to solve the epidemic of violent crime and stop using firearms as a scapegoat for failed policies.”
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.
We don’t try our cases in the press” has to change. Here’s why.
There’s a Latin saying: Silentium est consensus. It translates to “silence equals consent.” When a wrongfully accused person does not answer the charge, most people read it as an admission of guilt. It’s a legal principle of our law that this is not so, but unfortunately, only attorneys and cops seem to realize that.
Those same lawyers and cops have all been told in law school and the police academy, “We don’t discuss our cases in the press; it will all come out in court.” Unfortunately, in recent years, things have changed. Greed-motivated plaintiffs’ lawyers and politically motivated prosecutors have taken to trying their cases in the press, and when the accused do not respond in the same venue, well … silentium est consensus becomes the uncontested verdict in the Court of Public Opinion.
Kenosha: Kyle Rittenhouse fires the shot that “vaporizes” Gaige Grosskreutz’s
gun arm, which is holding a GLOCK 27 aimed at his head.
Riots
Los Angeles, 1992. A hulking suspect became violent during a traffic stop. An early version of the TASER had no effect, and when four LAPD cops “swarmed” him each grabbing an arm or a leg, he threw them aside like a terrier flinging rats. A citizen named George Holliday turned on his new camcorder in time to catch the man, Rodney King, trying to jerk Officer Lawrence Powell’s Beretta from its holster. The batons came out, and a bit over a minute and 50-some PR-24 swings later, the man was in handcuffs. The video found its way quickly to the media.
The suspect was black, the officers white, and the “Rodney King beating” became a national outrage. The public saw, again and again, the ugliest 10 seconds of the video, though King’s gun snatch attempt was never shown until the trial and then seen by only a small percentage of the public. When the cops were acquitted, riots followed, taking more than 60 lives, injuring thousands, and wreaking economic devastation in what was already one of the most poverty-stricken parts of the city.
Kenosha, 2020. Almost three decades later, another video surfaced in a city of 100,000 in Wisconsin. It showed police officers with drawn guns following a black man, Jacob Blake, from the right rear of an automobile containing two little kids, around the front to the driver’s door, where one officer finally shot him seven times behind lateral midline. It became an instant cause célèbre: “Unarmed Black Man Shot Seven Times in Back.” The police department said not a word in defense of the officer’s action. The city burned and incurred tens of millions of dollars in damages, and three men were shot on video in demonstrable self-defense, two fatally, by a young man subsequently tried for murder.
From the beginning, a knife had been visible in Blake’s hand, and the officer fired only after he perceived the man turning on him with it within arm’s reach. In truth, the story should have been “Cops Save Black Children from Knife-Wielding Kidnapper.” Yet the “unarmed” narrative continued even after Blake himself confessed he was armed and the state Attorney General’s Office at last released the truth — weeks after the riot and the killings.
Circle shows Jacob Blake’s knife in his left hand, as cops follow him with drawn
guns shouting commands to drop it, moments before he is shot.
By Con
Years after the King conflagration, when Charlie Beck became chief of LAPD, he created a policy whereby after any potentially controversial OIS (Officer Involved Shooting) a press conference would be held. It would include the original 911 call, dashcam and bodycam video, scene photos and a narrative of what actually happened. It would be widely disseminated to the public, with the promise the investigation would continue, and the public kept apprised.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department followed, setting a high standard for thoroughness. So did a number of other police departments.
LAPD to LVMPD and beyond, except for disturbances caused nationwide by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, every department following this policy has escaped major rioting. The reason is, they have “gotten ahead of the story” and kept false narratives from gaining traction.
We have seen the same principle in armed citizen self-defense shootings. A few years ago in Austin, Texas, John Daub had to shoot and kill a home invader who broke through the front door of his home while his wife and children were present.
He was a member of the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network (armedcitizensnetwork.org), which had attorney Gene Anthes on the scene before the blood on the floor dried — telling reporters what had really happened. The result: a justifiable homicide ruling and public support and sympathy for John and his family.
A rule of human conflict is when one’s opponents change their attack strategy, one has to alter defense strategy accordingly. With today’s twisting of the truth by journalists and lawyers with less than honorable motives, we need police departments and attorneys who will not leave those who righteously pull the trigger undefended in the unforgiving Court of Public Opinion.