Joshua Foust is both a genuinely good guy and an expert on the affairs of Central Asia.  I am neither.  With that said, I strongly disagree with the theme of his analysis of the question of whether all militants are the same?  He weighs in thusly.

Max Boot thinks all militants are the same.

Of greater immediate concern are al Qaeda’s allies: the Quetta Shura Taliban, the Haqqani network and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HiG), which among them deploy thousands of hardened terrorists. These groups, in turn, are part of a larger conglomeration of extremists based in Pakistan including the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (the Pakistani Taliban), Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed…

The major difference among them, at least so far, has been one of geographic focus. The Taliban, the Haqqani network and HiG want to seize power in Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban aspires to rule in Islamabad. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are primarily focused on wresting Kashmir away from India, although there have been reports of the former’s network expanding into Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Only al Qaeda has a global focus—so far.

Apart from rightly noting that al Qaeda is the only one of these groups that poses even a remote threat to the U.S. homeland, this is basically all wrong—so wrong I’m curious if it is the result of maliciousness or just laziness. Boot engages in some worrying conflations and conceptual fuzziness. Assuming the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban groups work together, are equally associated with al Qaeda, or pose an equal and in some way interchangeable threat is, put simply, dramatically at odds with our understanding of those groups, their goals, and their methods. There is no ” a larger conglomeration of extremists,” as he asserts, as that term implies an interoperability that just doesn’t exist in the real world.

Mullah Omar, contrary to what Boot writes, was not closer to Osama bin Laden than Hafiz Muhammed Saeed — and that sort of formulation misses the point anyway. Similarly, and again in contrast to Boot’s portrayal, there ARE a number of signs that the Afghan Taliban (NOT the Pakistani Taliban or Kashmir-focused terror groups, all of which Boot confuses) is seeking a way to break with al Qaeda — and we have reports of these signs going back at least to 2008.

We’ll start with this bit.  I am of the opinion – based on what I have studied – that most of the so-called Afghan “Taliban” who have sought to “reconcile” with the Karzai government are washed-up has-beens who want an easier life as they go into their golden years.  They play us and the Afghan government for fools, and they don’t legitimately represent either the Quetta Shura or Tehrik-i-Taliban (or any allied or affiliated or similar group).

Moving on, it might have been legitimate to have discussed divisions, subdivisions and categories of Taliban and al Qaeda ten or even six years ago.  Things have changed since then.

… they have evolved into a much more radical organization than the original Taliban bent on global engagement, what Nicholas Schmidle calls the Next-Gen Taliban. The TTP shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! “We are al-Qaida!”  There is no distinction.  A Pakistan interior ministry official has even said that the TTP and al Qaeda are one and the same.

Nick Schmidle – who is also a genuinely good guy and a scholar – gave us a learned warning shot over the bow.  It was reiterated by David Rohde who was in captivity by the Taliban.

Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

More recently we have a report at the Asia Times from Syed Saleem Shahzad on Maulvi Nazir.

Extremely loyal to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and a part of the Afghan Taliban, Nazir began as a conventional Talib guerrilla and a follower of the populist traits of the Taliban movement.

This changed in 2006, when, like many others including Sirajuddin Haqqani, Nazir became inspired by al-Qaeda and realized that fighting a war without modern guerrilla techniques meant draining vital human resources for no return.

That led to the advancement of the skills of Nazir’s fighters, and it also came with rewards.

In Afghanistan, if a commander sticks solely to his relations with the Taliban, he will never climb the ladder to prominence and the Taliban can only provide a limited number of local tribal fighters and meager funds. But if a commander allies with al-Qaeda, he is given the opportunity for joint operations with top Arab commanders who arrange finances for those operations.

Similarly, breakaway factions of Pakistani jihadi organizations like the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Laskhar-e-Taiba and the Harkatul Mujahideen also supply an unending stream of fighters to those commanders associated with al-Qaeda.

Nazir’s affiliation with al-Qaeda seems to have passed unnoticed by the United States and NATO, which are investing heavily in a reconciliation process with the “good Taliban” and they appear not to understand the drastic changes that have taken place among the top cadre of the Taliban …

“What is the rationale of dialogue after NATO’s withdrawal?” Nazir asked rhetorically. “Then, the Taliban and NATO can hold a dialogue on whether the Taliban would attack their interests all over the world or not, and what treaties should be undertaken in that regard.”

Taken aback by this statement from a Taliban stalwart who is not perceived as being a global jihadi but simply a guerrilla fighting against occupation forces in Afghanistan, I intervened. “Hitting Western targets abroad might be al-Qaeda’s agenda, but it is not the Taliban’s, so why should the West negotiate that with the Taliban?”

“Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are one and the same. At an operational level we might have different strategies, but at the policy level we are one and the same,” Nazir said, surprising me further.

I’m usually hesitant to cite Syed Saleem Shahzad since he is a mouth piece (witting or unwittingly) for the Taliban.  But occasionally he scores significant interviews, and those tend to be very productive and informative.  For this particular interview, the only thing that surprises me is that Syed Saleem Shahzad is surprised.

To be sure, there are factions within the TTP, and in fact, the Taliban are an amalgam of groups, subgroups, factions, leaders, and so on and so forth, some of whom disagree and even level threats at each other.

So what?  We all knew that.  The question redounds to threat, or some approximation thereof.  And so here is the crux of the issue.  Back to Foust as he opines “If these groups do not pose a threat to the United States, then it is not our problem to “fix” them. Period.”  And he summarizes.

I had hoped that the death of Osama bin Laden would at least temporarily tamp down on the irresponsible fear-mongering over a few crazies with guns in mountains whose names we cannot pronounce and who cannot and do not pose an existential threat to our existence. I guess my hope was mistaken.

Well, yes, no and maybe, depending upon point and inflection.  Let’s dissect.  I agree that it’s not the task of the U.S. to fix all of the world’s problems if there is no national security interest.  In fact, I couldn’t agree more.  While it’s laudable that we might want women treated better in Afghanistan, that’s not a reason for war.  We cannot be the policemen of the world, nor does the world want us as policemen.

But this issue of threat is more complex.  Don’t forget that the Hamburg cell headed for Afghanistan intent on receiving training and returning to Germany to perpetrate violence there.  It was OBL who persuaded them to pull off an attack in the States, and we know it as 9/11.  It was actually a fairly simple attack, and if there is any mistake that the AQ leadership is making at the moment it is that they are focusing on big, flashy attacks when they should be focusing on the simple.  I am thankful for this error in judgment.

I have already described an attack that America simply cannot absorb despite the ignorance of the current administration (who claims that we’re just fine).  The unfortunate truth is that American infrastructure, from bridges to malls, from buildings to roads, from airports to power plants, from water supplies to electrical grid, hasn’t been hardened since 9/11.  It would cost too much money to do it, far more than waging a counterinsurgency campaign in the hinterlands of the earth for the next decade.

As for threat, I never really believed that Baitullah Mehsud could actually pull off an attack on Washington, D.C.  What’s important is that he wanted to.  With enough time, money, motivation and several hundred dedicated fighters, I could bring the economy of the United States to its knees.  So can any smart Taliban leader.

Unlike Josh who believes that Max believes that all militants are the same, I see his mistake differently.  Max Boot makes the mistake of subdividing the Taliban, as if these are neat, clean, Aristotelian categories into which we can drop an organization.  This is wrong in my estimation.  They have swam in the same waters for the last decade with globalists galore, and this ideology has morphed the Pakistani Taliban into something they weren’t.  To a lesser extent this has happened with the Afghan Taliban.  Lesser extent, I admit, but it’s still there.  The mistake Joshua makes is that he sees no threat.  Again, this is wrong in my estimation.

I can play the subdivision game too.  I know the various groups of militants in the Pech River Valley, Hindu Kush, Kandahar, Helmand, FATA and NWFP.  It just doesn’t matter as much as it might have a few years ago, and to some extent I see it as pedantic and braggadocios to list out all of the names (and it’s even more impressive if you pronounce the names right – and for heaven’s sake, pronounce “Pech” correctly as “Pesh”).

But at some point I think this is all being too smart for our own good, and fiddling while Rome burns (or in this case, Central Asia).  The death of Bin Laden will have little affect on the global insurgency.  He and his ilk were but one manifestation of the globalist Islamist movement, the larger framework being the Muslim Brotherhood.  With the air of respectability, the MB will proceed apace.  Their military manifestation will still be seen in AQ, the TTP, Hamas, Hezbollah and others.  Bin Laden is dead.  The war continues.

As we discussed in Mission Kill or Mission Capture the administration just can’t get the narrative straight.  The situation isn’t improving with time.  One U.S. official said “Our Special Forces weren’t raiding a girl scout troop looking for overdue library books. They were on a kill mission for Osama bin Laden.”  Very well.  I’m okay with that.  But the administration continues to botch the narrative with discussions about justification for the raid.  He had access to guns, and “He was not compliant. He did not surrender.”  So the rules for killing (between our previous discussion and this one) now include the possibility that he may be wearing an explosive vest, having access to weapons, and being noncompliant.

In addition to having to kill insurgents, my own son had to lay football style tackles down on people in Fallujah 2007 because they didn’t have weapons and yet needed to be detained or brought down for whatever reason.  And every house he entered had weapons.  And as for the possibility that someone may have explosives, that might have been a justification for shooting in almost any domicile they raided (and there is a difference between entering and raiding, and they did raid and perform room clearing operations).

There is more though.  Senator Saxby Chambliss, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, gives us more insight into just what happened.

”I hope they went in with the idea of killing him, not capturing him. We needed to take this guy out. And I know that’s what the executive order said.

“The other thing you have to remember is that this was pitch dark. When they got into the room with bin Laden, they already had to go through some other folks downstairs, two of which they killed. And they were having to use explosives to blow doors open. By the time they got to him, they didn’t know what they would find.”

Well, being pitch dark is irrelevant and doesn’t affect the rules of engagement.  That’s just one more justification in an attempt to hide the apparent executive order to kill Bin Laden.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I still have no problem with the order, if it was issued.  It seems to comport with the other information that has been unearthed.  I have a problem with Marines in the Helmand Province operating under different rules, rules that force them to arrest known Taliban IED emplacers, who have blown the legs off of fellow Marines, and then who are seen walking by waving and smiling while the Marines are on patrol a week later because the prison system is so corrupt in Afghanistan.

Try to convince the Marines in Helmand that Bin Laden was a higher value target than the Taliban who just made sure that their buddy would never walk again.  Try to convince my friend John Bernard – who lost his only son Joshua Bernard in Dahaneh, Afghanistan on 8/14/09 and won’t see him again this side of heaven – that SEAL Team 6, however much we might appreciate their work in this raid, should be operating under rules that make them any more safe than the Marines in Helmand or U.S. Soldiers in the Pech River Valley.

It’ll be a mighty hard sell to me.

Prior: Bin Laden: Mission Kill or Mission Capture?

I can’t believe I am going to give space to this Article by Timothy Carney in The Washington Examiner, but, as it seems to represent a growing feeling out there, even among conservatives, Mr. Carney’s article may be useful in clarifying some issues that get awfully foggy when something happens like the killing of Bin Laden.

Mr. Carney’s piece posits these incredible insights:

The United States’ long, bloody occupation of Afghanistan did not significantly help the U.S. find and kill Osama bin Laden, current evidence indicates. Neither did the invasion and occupation of Iraq help in decapitating al Qaeda, it appears.

The means of bin Laden’s demise, and the location of his hideout, both undermine the arguments offered for the last decade by hawks who claimed an invasion of Iraq and an imperial presence in Afghanistan would help America smash al Qaeda.

Somehow, Carney (and others) have been trying to turn the killing of Osama Bin Laden into more than just the swing of the executioner’s axe.  But no matter how it is spun, there is no, larger lesson here.  Bin Laden was a crazed beast that needed to be hunted down and terminated.   If there is a larger lesson, it is not in the killing of Bin Laden, per se, but in the means– the necessity for utmost secrecy, to keep even a whiff of the operation from a purported ally, Pakistan, and to covertly violate Pakistani airspace to a location deep within its borders, some 40 miles outside of its capital.  But for Carney and his fellow travelers the killing of Bin Laden is an opportunity to beat the drum for retreat, defeat and America-bashing thrown in for good measure.

Rather than produce any, real evidence, Carney puts together a straw man:  “hawks who claimed an invasion of Iraq and an imperial presence in Afghanistan would help America smash al Qaeda.”   I challenge Mr. Carney to produce the quotes of these so-called “hawks” that “for the last decade” have been calling for “an imperial presence” in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Hard to say it any better than that.

Who ever argued that invading Iraq would provide “a treasure trove of intelligence on Al Qaeda” ? The 2003 invasion of Iraq was always about the removal of a crazed dictator, hostile to the U.S., in possession of weapons of mass destruction.   As it turned out, Al Qaeda was drawn to Iraq like a mosquito to a bug zapper.  And, predictably enough, that “bug” got zapped by the Marines, but good.  Carney seems to be making up the bit about “hawks” from whole cloth.

Whether Carney likes it or not, there is simply no, easy option for fighting the Islamofascists.   They have to be beaten like Al Qaeda was in Anbar Province, Iraq:  direct, kinetic operations that wipe them out mercilessly and demonstrate to the population that terrorism is the losing side.   The popular notion that we cannot “kill our way” out of an insurgency is too often political cover for avoiding the hard reality of the fight.

We can argue about whether the strategy in Afghanistan has been correct.  The evidence coming in from Helmand Province and Kandahar, where U.S. Marines are literally wiping the floor with the enemy and making it impossible for them to re-infiltrate, is encouraging.   It is the path to victory and it is the only, viable exit.

Those of Mr. Carney’s opinion looking for lessons from the war on terror thus far  should study Iraq, not the elimination of Bin Laden.    At the height of the hysteria in 2006, when people (no doubt Mr. Carney included) were calling the war in Iraq hopeless and unwinnable, President Bush brought in more forces to apply more pressure and better kinetic operations against the terrorists.   The hard fighting in 2007 paid off and by late 2007, Al Qaeda was clearly on the run and a broken and humiliated foe.   Although I personally disagree with the rapid draw down in Iraq, there is no doubt that our very ability to draw down is due entirely to the butt-kicking that we gave the terrorists (and Al Sadr’s thugs) in 2006-2007.    Iraq is relatively stable today, with extremely low casualty levels.

Turning back to Afghanistan, the U.S. does not look for “excuses” to surrender and run away.   Maybe Obama does, but not the U.S.   We either win the fight by taking it to the terrorists, or we decide that the fight is not in our national interest and we leave.   Either way, it has nothing to do with a so-called Empire or the killing of Bin Laden.  The killing of Bin Laden satisfied a basic need to see retributive justice done.   (This, as a side-bar, is far different than revenge and, therefore, wholly justifiable).   But, as others have observed, the tide of war has long left Bin Laden behind and shifted to other, more important locations:  Pakistan, Yemen, Iran, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.  Although it is understandable for politicians to grandstand and preen over a successful mission, it would be far better for national security if we congratulated the work of our military and intelligence services and quickly moved on to grappling with the important tasks at hand.

A striking contradiction has been present for a long time in the so-called war on terror, but this contradiction is highlighted with the recent death of Osama Bin Laden, the highest of all high value targets.  There are two narratives that have developed in the short time since he was killed (it’s amazing that any administration could get things so confused).

The first narrative is that the women were thrown out in front of the men and used as human shields.  This makes me celebrate.  No, not the death of non-combatants, but the action, if it in fact occurred.  Bin Laden, who is routinely shown in file tape toting a Kalashnikov and wearing tactical gear, hid in caves at Tora Bora rather than fight, and then fled when he could.  Rather than fight with his recruits or even be seen in public, he hides behind walls and then when the fight is brought to him, rather than protect his family, he throws them out in front of himself to avoid being shot.

How rich.  Jihadist-Warrior-Martyr my ass.  He was a cowardly weasel.  I’m okay with this.  Or, there is the second narrative to consider, and it makes me happy too.  Rather than fighting from behind women and children, they just got in the way and some perished while others were wounded.  But the legendary, storied SEAL Team 6 simply went in and shot him.  Bin Laden didn’t even have a weapon when he was shot.  In fact, not a single shot was fired at the SEAL Team (presumably the Pakistani police know this because of spent cartridges?).

Working hard to justify this to themselves, they are.  Eric Holder testified before Congress today.

“The operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed was lawful,” Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “He was the head of al-Qaida, an organization that had conducted the attacks of September 11th. He admitted his involvement and he indicated that he would not be taken alive. The operation against bin Laden was justified as an act of national self defense.”

He was a very bad guy and we’re in a war.  Fine.  But wait, there’s more.

Holder said bin Laden was a legitimate military target and he had made no attempt to surrender to the U.S. forces that stormed his fortified compound near Islamabad on Monday. He was shot in the chest and head.

It was lawful to target an enemy commander in the field and the mission was conducted in the way that was consistent with U.S. laws and values, Holder testified, adding that it was a “kill or capture mission.”

“If he had attempted to surrender, I think we should obviously have accepted that, but there was no indication that he wanted to do that. And therefore his killing was appropriate,” Holder said.

Senator Lindsey Graham chimed in thusly.

“You have to believe this guy was a walking IED,” and that any of the Navy SEALs would have wanted to kill bin Laden as far away as possible from the other members of the American team.

Yes, Lindsey, I routinely put on my explosive vest every day when I get home from work.  I’m sure that Bin Laden was wearing one too.  Holder jumped right on that ridiculous bandwagon by agreeing with Graham, so they both looked even more ridiculous than when they started.

But wait, there’s even more.  The narrative gets muddled.

The SEALs’ decision to fatally shoot bin Laden — even though he didn’t have a weapon – wasn’t an accident.  The administration had made clear to the military’s clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions.  A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive.

So by walking this back, Eric Holder is actually placing the SEAL Team 6 members at risk by alleging that there was a fire fight, and that resistance can occur with or without a weapon, and so on.  No one actually believes that a 54 year old man without a weapon is a threat to the most fit, well-trained warriors on earth.  No one.

They shouldn’t feel the need to work so hard at the justification.  We already engage in targeted assassinations, i.e., the drone strikes that kill high value targets all over Western Pakistan, just like the strike that killed Baitullah Mehsud (and that strike killed family members as well).  Baitullah Mehsud couldn’t surrender to an aircraft, and surely wasn’t pointing a weapon at a U.S. service member when he died.  Yet we killed him anyway because he was the enemy, or at least, one of them.

There is confusion over this issue generally because there is confusion at the highest levels of the administration.  It’s why flag officers who should know better tried to hold snipers accountable for murder because they shot an unarmed Taliban commander in Afghanistan.

And herein lies the rub.  We unleashed SEAL Team 6 to kill Bin Laden, apparently, and I don’t have a problem with that.  It isn’t necessary for me to believe that he was holding a weapon or wearing a bomb or somehow a threat to the team.  He wasn’t.  He was the enemy, and that’s enough for me.

But we hold Marines in the Helmand Province, still under fire, fighting for their lives, to a completely different standard.  After recently lampooning the prison system in Afghanistan (something I have done repeatedly), a Marine father responds this way.

According to my son, a USMC 0311 recently returned from Helmand, the effect on their morale when seeing released Taliban was significant. He recalled capturing two bombers after an IED wounded a squad-mate. A week later they saw the two walking by them, smiling and waving. He said apparently American testimony is inadmissible in Afghan courts. Many of the IEDs they saw were command detonated, so they would hustle to catch the bomber.

The officers and visiting Senators would interact with the Afghans, but the 03s in my son’s company didn’t trust any of them, including the imbedded ANP. The only one they would get to know were the interpreters (“terps”), but they were the primary target of the bombers, so they turned over a lot. The squad leaders walked with the terps, so they turned over a lot too.

SEAL Team 6 is to be congratulated.  But there’s still fighting going on.  The catch-and-release program in Afghanistan is a joke, and prisons do not work in counterinsurgency.  The only thing prisons are doing in Afghanistan is making the American fighting man look like a chump when Taliban whom they have captured walk down the road smiling and waving at them.  It isn’t winning any hearts and minds, and it isn’t going to change.  The system is too corrupt, and we don’t want it to change badly enough.  We would rather see Marines lose their legs.

So if you agree with what SEAL Team 6 did to Bin Laden, and if you agree with the drone program, then sleep well.  But if you have a problem with the Marines in Helmand doing the same thing to Taliban fighters, then you are inconsistent.  Consistency isn’t the Hobgoblin of little minds.  It’s the stuff of life.

I simply won’t let this inconsistency pass.  I will force it upon me [you] [y’all] [us] [them] [the administration] [everyone].  It’s not okay to be irrational.  You can’t have it both ways.  If you wanted to see Bin Laden and Baitullah Mehsud dead but you want the Marines to play by different rules in their particular piece of hell, then you must go to sleep tonight knowing that you’re irrational, and you are irrational deep down where it matters most, on basic issues of morality, violence, warfare, life and death.

UPDATE: From the AP.

Only one of the five people killed in the raid that got Osama bin Laden was armed and fired a shot, a senior defense official said Thursday, acknowledging the new account differs greatly from original administration portrayals of a chaotic, intense and prolonged firefight.

The sole shooter in the al-Qaida leader’s Pakistani compound was quickly killed in the early minutes of the commando operation, details that have become clearer now that the Navy SEAL assault team has been debriefed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

He said the raid should be described as a precision, floor-by-floor operation to hunt and find the al-Qaida leader and his protectors, rather than as it has been portrayed by a succession of Obama administration briefers since bin Laden’s death was announced Sunday night.

Increasing clarity, just not from the administration.

In January of 2011 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives authored what they call the Study on the Importability of Certain Shotguns.  The comment period ends on May 1, 2011, and my comments have been submitted to the pertinent e-mail address with name, address and other contact information.  My comments are herewith submitted to my readers.

It really is a sad state of affairs at the ATF.  With salient and pressing scandals that deserve attention (along with a need for a thorough house-cleaning and full disclosure by the ATF), lawyers and analysts have been focusing exquisite detail on the features that should be [dis]allowed on importable shotguns.

The ATF is working within the context of the decisions on the ban on assault rifles, a ban that had sunset provisions which are no longer applicable.  Features such as a pistol grip, a forend grip, a rail system for things such as tactical lights (light enhancing devices), high capacity detachable magazines, etc., are deemed to be associated with military style weapons and as such (in the determination of the ATF study team) are not “readily adaptable for sporting purposes.”

But this judgment is arbitrary, and I charge the ATF with circular reasoning.  Rather than appeal to facts which demonstrate whether a specific feature is adaptable for sporting purposes, the ATF study team apparently without reservation gives us the purpose around which their judgments are made, i.e., ensuring that the statutes codified in the Gun Control Act of 1968 remain useful.  As I observe in one comment:

On page 4 the following statements are made: “The 1989 study then examined the scope of “sporting purposes” as used in the statute. The study noted that “[t]he broadest possible interpretation could take in virtually any lawful activity or competition which any person or groups of persons might undertake. Under this interpretation, any rifle could meet the “sporting purposes” test. The 1989 study concluded that a broad interpretation would render the statute useless.”

Wrapped up in this paragraph we have not only an amusing logical blunder but also the real crux of the problem. Authors have presupposed the answer (so-called circular reasoning) at which they must arrive, i.e., the statute must remain useful. Thus, all interpretations by ATF are biased to yield that result. It is not the responsibility of the ATF nor is it within the purview of their authority to ensure the continued usefulness of a statute, if in fact it is rendered useless by advances, common practices, evolution in sporting, or lack of wise crafting of the statute (such as the fact that nowhere in this discussion of “sporting purposes” is there any latitude given for personal protection and home defense under the second amendment to the constitution of the United States). This single paragraph renders the study itself as useless as the statute has become.

As to the issue of the usefulness of military style features on weapons, I remark:

Ask any skeet shooter if s/he enjoys stopping every five shells and the answer makes for easy dismissal of authors’ objections to these features on firearms. Another example might be feral hog hunting, which usually occurs at night since these are nocturnal creatures. Feral hogs are destroying the American landscape, causing many farmers in the American South to go out of business, attacking household pets and even humans.  According to NFS and game control experts, they are multiplying more quickly than can be accommodated by lethal removal. Not only is feral hog hunting a sport involving guides and businesses specifically for that purpose, it may be necessary for lethal removal to be increased by an order of magnitude to save the American farmer.  Nocturnal hunting requires enhanced or tactical lights on Picatinny or Weaver rail systems, and hunting feral hogs might require high capacity magazines. Finally, note that some shooters have medical problems such as arthritis. Pistol and forend grips used for any sport and with any weapon can not only make the weapon less painful to use, it can make the difference between whether the shooter can engage in the sport at all. So with three examples (skeet shooting, feral hog hunting and medical problems) it has been demonstrated that the list of firearms features supplied by authors as not adaptable for sporting make the firearms more adaptable for sporting, and it is the proposed ATF regulations that are directly contrary to the practice of sporting. Many more such examples could be supplied.

I conclude the comments with this summary:

In general I find that the study [a] appeals to authority without citation of those authorities, [b] engages in circular reasoning in that conclusions are fixed at the outcome of the discussion (i.e., ensuring the continued usefulness of a particular statute), [c] is dated and out of touch with current practice, [d] ignores legitimate uses of certain weapon features for various sporting functions and activities, [e] fabricates arbitrary categories, [f] makes what can be demonstrated to be material false assertions. As such, this study cannot be used for promulgating regulation without damage being done to the constitutional rights of citizens of the United States.

Regardless of the disposition of this particular set of proposed regulations, this action by the ATF is yet another warning shot.  The ATF is working very hard to ensure that purchasing and using weapons – legally – is as hard as possible.  And yet the bureau might just take an even harder turn to the left.  If we learn nothing else through this study and related efforts, we learn that the Obama administration is no friend to second amendment rights.

Herschel Smith Comments on_ATF_Study on the Importability of Certain Shotguns

UPDATE: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link.