About that mysterious memo obtained by KSTP, which was being sent to law enforcement and FFLs… except no FFL had seen it, and which I’ve been trying to get from them since December 4th: I finally got a definite reply from KSTP’s Beth McDonough, who broke the story.
The memo at last. Um…
Well, at least one page of it.
McDonough said that she only had one page.
Note that rather than “being sent to law enforcement agencies and gun shops with a federal firearms license,” it is an internal memo addressed to “All Special Agents in Charge.” That certainly explains why no FFL has seen it. Perhaps McDonough is a little vague on the difference between SAC and FFL.
Without the rest of the memo, including the signature block, I still don’t know where this came from. Is that “Assistant Director, Field Operations” in the ATF’s DC headquarters, is this from the Minnesota operations boss?
And it sure would be nice to see “these procedures,” so we’d have a clue about compliance (malicious though it might be).
Oddly enough, it is dated November 28, 2018, but speaks of the rule already being in effect, having been published in the Federal Register.
According to this, the rule is in the “Final Rule Stage,” but not in “Completed Actions.”
When all is said and done, having the memo — at least the one page — doesn’t clarify much of anything.
(More Tip Jar Options) |
HOAX.
Obama was right. We are beset by fake news. But as we all understood (and he never admitted), it’s all coming from the MSM.
When they were first beginning to discuss the bump stocks, due to the Mandalay Bay shooting, I was torn. Torn because the bump stocks are, to me, not only pointless, but inefficient as well. I was not thinking that the ATF, by way of the Feds, were going to make the ruling that a bump stock was a machine gun. And since they are manufactured after 1986, they could not be registered and used, even following the NFA.
This memo mentions the bump stocks as ” Bump Stock-Type Devices. I know that this memorandum is not law itself, but just instructions to the boots on the ground. But I am just wondering exactly how the ruling is going to describe what a bump stock is.
When the government makes a rule or law, and writes it so broadly that it can affect anyone or anything, you simply must realize that it is done that way on purpose. And the net that they cast now becomes not only larger, but the holes in it become smaller.
By just knowing how the federal government thinks, or doesn’t, I have a pretty good idea of how this rule is going to be enforced. I figure that the first few people who are caught in that net, are going to be prosecuted just as hard and heavy handed as they can possibly be. The idea for that being to use them as an example, so that others can be intimidated to destroy their own device.
I do not have a bump stock, heck, I only have one gun that could be capable of using that kind of thing to make it shoot faster and less accurately. I have a .22 caliber semi automatic rifle, made by Mossberg. If I did have a bump stock, I have to admit, I don’t know exactly what I would do with it. As a gun owner who is becoming more and more angry with some of the things happening with the gun laws, my first instinct would be to just hide the thing, and keep it, merely for the statement it would make. As a husband and a father, my instinct is to say that I would get rid of it, in one of the recommended ways, as I don’t want to cause my family the problems with me being in prison, and I don’t want to have a felony on my record, taking away my 2nd amendment rights.
About that loss of rights, I find it to be a wrong headed thing for the government to do to it’s citizens. I might understand if the crime committed had been done with a gun, then taking away the firearm rights when they got out of prison. But consider if a person committed a felony that was non violent. For example, vandalism on federal property can be considered a 3rd degree felony. So if you are protesting with others, against something, say against gun control laws, and in doing so, you happen to damage a barrier of some type. You are arrested, and charged with felony vandalism, and of course, they don’t simply charge you with that, but they always tack on several other related charges, such as illegal protesting, or assault on a police officer, because you were falling and you grabbed his or her arm to keep from hurting yourself. By the time they are done, you are then encouraged to plea bargain down to a 3rd degree felony, with a fine of 1000$ and 200 hours of community service.
Now, because you were protesting, as is your legal right, but got caught up in a crackdown done on purpose by the mayor of the city, to hold you as an example, you are no longer able to vote, to possess a gun, or to hold certain offices. Plus, many employers won’t even look at the resume of those who have a felony on their record, no matter the circumstances.
I have been watching the state and local laws that are used to take away some of the gun rights that the SCOTUS determined were ours in the Heller ruling. And I keep waiting for the court to take an appealed case to rule on, so they can make it clear that the SCOTUS was serious when they made that ruling. I am still waiting.
I suspect that now, with a seemingly conservative court, which just means that they follow the constitution, we might see the court take a case so they can rule again to make the lower courts understand that, like I used to tell my kids, no means no. Or in this case, when the Supreme Court says something, they mean it, and won’t allow lower courts to ignore them, without repercussions.
That we even need to have this discussion tells just how messed up things are in America at this point in time. For the last several decades, polls of Americans have consistently shown that we as a country are supporters of gun ownership and rights. But the liberal part of the nation has had their game played better than the conservative part. It is time now for gun supporters to stand up, and to be silent no longer.
Who would have thought that this quickly after Trump became president, we would be fighting about such things. But I don’t blame it all on the president. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConell are both sitting there with big targets on their backs, it seems, and have been afraid to go forth with the things that people elected Trump to do. And now, they have lost the house, which everyone could have predicted. So they basically wasted the first two years of a Republican house, senate, and executive branch. What do they have to show for it? The economy, maybe, but that is cyclical, and so it was probably going to get better anyway, no matter who the president was. Health care reform? Yeah, that was important when Obama in office, but now, with Trump, not so much.
At least a bigger number of people are paying attention, from where I am sitting. Let’s hope that things start to go well, and the Supreme Court eventually gets it right.