It’s a brand-new month, but all that’s really changed is the calendar photo and the day of the week.
Life today is a lot like playing whack-a-mole. Knock one thing down and three others peek up to keep your mole-knocker busy.
Wildfires, floods, hurricanes and natural disasters withstanding, it’s beginning to get tiring.
As we’ve watched an administration ask permission to run from a group of fourth century religious fanatics, we might wonder why anyone would take the U.S. seriously anymore. If that’s where you find yourself, you might want to recognize the fact that while they run like frightened rabbits from external forces, they don’t hesitate to turn an endlessly-growing and increasingly more militant bureaucracy against us.
Like the Taliban, the bureaucracy is more than willing to impose their rules on their subjects.
To them, the subjects are…us.
Yes, you. Yes, me. And everyone else who dares question them.
Today, we are entering the final week of a comment period regarding the ATF’s proposed reinterpretation of their Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached "Stabilizing Braces.
Long explanation short, their plan will reclassify pistols with attached stabilizing braces into “short barreled rifles” as regulated under the National Firearms Act. That NFA classification requires licensing and a $200 tax stamp.
Yes, you should oppose the action. And you should register your opposition ASAP.
As the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms explains, such a change “will threaten millions of citizens with prison, harsh fines, forfeiture of firearms, and the loss of the right to own or possess firearms should they fail to comply with ATF’s policy change.”
If you haven’t already, there 2A groups are more than willing to help you. Here’s a link to the ATF comment site, and a second link for guidance on how to correctly make your opposition known via a release in last Friday’s Shooting Wire (courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation).
It is important that each of us go on record opposing the proposal. I say that despite the fact that regardless of the comments, the reinterpreted rule will most likely be adopted.
Why?
Because some fellow gun owners couldn’t resist poking the bear about pistol braces.
Not content to quietly use the braces incorrectly -and without legal peril - they had to scream it across the internet.
Despite being warned -repeatedly- that showing, promoting and advertising braces designed to help physically challenged people shoot deliberately being mis-used by the rest of us as a pseudo-stock was a very bad idea, they couldn’t resist.
The ATF had essentially issued a stay-out-of-jail free card, stating that manufacturers couldn’t be held liable for users misusing them. It didn’t say you could mis-use it, but it did recognize the brace as a legitimate tool for physically challenged shooters.
But some just couldn’t resist rubbing it in. And they persisted, even after the gun-banners took power.
They noticed. Then, surprise of surprises, they acted.
They might waffle over everything else, but there’s no hesitation when it comes to clamping down on gun owners. Especially when there’s no denying the mis-behavior.
Consequently, we find ourselves fighting an unnecessary battle over a reinterpretation of a rule no one had any real interest in changing -until our side of the 2A fight turned it into a point of contention.
While I encourage everyone to go to the ATF website and register an objection, I can’t blame the ATF for this one.
This time, we’re to blame.
We’re so busy fighting to prevent infringements on our rights, we’ve ignored the obligation to police our wrongs. Rights and obligations are inseparable. If we care about one, we take care of the other.
We squawk at the slightest safety violation on the range, then snicker like a nine-year-old over fart jokes when one of our internet ninja/experts flips out his (or her) arm brace and advances on a target. Oooh-rah, get some! (And don’t forget to “like” us, because we (still) depend on the anti-gunners at YouTube for our income).
As Mrs. Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
We can afford to be wrong, but we dare not be stupid. Color us stupid on this one.
— Jim Shepherd
