David Codrea:

The report, while as yet not corroborated, is consistent with information Gun Rights Examiner has been investigating, including by attempting earlier today to obtain confirmation from ATF.

“FFLGuard has learned from unconfirmed sources that current ATF Director B. Todd Jones will be stepping down by the end of the month, and perhaps even sooner,” the alert reports. “Rumor is that Jones will be making a move from guns to sports, as a lawyer for the National Football League. The good news is that the ‘acting’ personnel who will be elevating to higher positions, albeit temporarily, have historically been receptive to the concerns of FFLs.”

David cites other sources as well.  I cannot confess to having any personal concern for the man whatsoever.  He could get run over by a truck tomorrow and I wouldn’t so much as blink.  As for his departure, this is a good thing.  The more the ATF stays in disarray and without a leader at the helm to direct it in the implementation of its onerous, bureaucratic overburden to American patriots, the better.

Kurt Hofmann:

But a larger point is that in claiming that the current law–banning ammunition by virtue of its construction–is inadequate, because an infinitude of ammo not so constructed is equally capable of penetrating body armor, they are tacitly admitting what gun rights advocates have been saying since the attempt to ban the M855 came to light. That round has no special “armor piercing” capability. Reps. Israel and Speier must know this, but that did not stop them from railing against the decision to shelve the M855 ban proposal.

They lamented the demise of the green tip ban and blamed it on the ATF, and then turned around and admitted that they need to include all other sorts of ammunition within the scope of the ban.  You just can’t make this stuff up.

Gunsmithing the Kurds:

In their fight against ISIS, the Kurdish army known as Peshmerga has a secret weapon – a second-generation gunsmith so skilled he can practically turn a bucket of rusty bolts into a killing machine for the rugged, but cash-strapped, fighting force.

Bakhtiar Aziz works in a dimly lit basement shop in Erbil, refurbishing guns taken from the enemy, bringing broken and even decades-old firearms back to life and helping to outfit an army as short on weapons as it is long on heart. On a recent day, he inspected an M-16A4 assault rifle badly damaged in a coalition airstrike. Pocked with holes, missing a large section of the barrel and with human hair wedged in its moving parts, the gun was found by Peshmerga soldiers near the town of Gwer.

[ … ]

As he used a drill to grind away at burrs on a recovered gun, Aziz said his trade will be in demand, even when, he hopes, ISIS is defeated.

“Weapons always get broken,” he said. “That’s why I have to repair them.”

Well, just to be clear, an armorer changes parts.  A gunsmith can take a block of metal and fabricate a 1911 out of it.  I wish I had all of these skills, but engineers can only tell the machinists what to do.  We usually can’t do it ourselves.  I spent precious little time on a lathe in a course called “Manufacturing Processes,” and it wasn’t a programmable lathe (think 35 years ago).

But also to be clear to the totalitarians among us, you can never remove weapons from the people.  There will always be a way to defend ourselves and hold tyrants accountable.