If you recall, a federal judge completely vacated the ATF’s frame and receiver rule, and after appeal to the Fifth Circuit to issue a stay on the judge’s decision, the Fifth Circuit told the ATF that they weren’t likely to prevail. It’s a bit more complicated than that, because there were non-challenged provisions vacated along with the stupid main points of the frame and receiver rule. But the ATF doesn’t care about that, and neither do the plaintiffs.
Well, the ATF got their panties in a wad over all of that and had a girl-fit, and they have sent this to the Supreme Court.
Here is their paperwork. Most of it is laughable. In fact, it’s so stupid that I’m not going to lift prose out of it. You can read it for yourself.
Let’s rehearse this again. What the ATF is saying is that they don’t want people to be able to do what the colonialists did back in the days before and preceding the war of independence. That is, make their own machinery, if said machinery can propel a projectile.
The FedGov wants them all serialized, because guess why?
I’ve said it before. I consider the entirety of the serialization schema to be immoral and unconstitutional.
I can vouch for what they’re saying. Rock River Arms produces exquisitely built rifles, capable of very good accuracy and precision (repeatability). They make fine machinery.
There are two things that I think have held them back. First, being in Illinois, and second, their slightly longer lag time at adopting new things (e.g., light forends). For a long time, their forends were extremely heavy and a bit clunky. No more. They’re up with the rest of the industry on that.
I also dislike the fact that they haven’t yet made a rifle in 6mm ARC (but that goes back to what I’m saying about being slow to adopt new things).
I’ll make one final comment. At one time they only made a polymer 1911 (which in my book is no 1911 at all). I see that their catalog now includes some very nice 1911s, but the prices are extremely high, even exceeding the Dan Wesson price range. They’re into the Wilson Combat price range, and it makes me wonder how many of them they sell.
Having failed to pass gun bans to curtail Americans’ purchases of firearms, the Biden administration appears now to be attempting to restrict the supply of guns, with a new “zero tolerance” policy at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that has put nearly 2,000 gun sellers out of business in the past two years, according to one lawsuit.
Starting in 2021, the ATF implemented an aggressive agenda in its inspections of Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs), in many cases permanently revoking licenses over what defendants say are minor clerical errors.
“This is an end-around gun ban, because you start putting gun dealers out of business and now all of a sudden it’s very difficult for people to purchase firearms,” Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America (GOA), told The Epoch Times. GOA filed a lawsuit on July 11 against the Biden administration in response to the ATF’s zero-tolerance enforcement.
The GOA lawsuit is requesting that the courts issue an injunction to end the ATF’s zero tolerance policies and “declare that the [ATF] has acted unconstitutionally, arbitrarily, capriciously, and contrary to law, in the establishment of and/or application of standards for revocation of federal firearm licenses.”
According to the ATF, the agency revoked 88 FFL licenses in 2022, compared to five that were revoked in 2021.
But a recent GOA court filing states that, “in addition to revocations, ATF has coerced and intimidated an ever increasing number of FFLs into ‘voluntarily’ ceasing operations. In fact, the number of FFLs who discontinued business following a compliance inspection increased from 96 in 2020 to 789 in 2021 (the year that ‘zero tolerance’ was adopted) to 1,037 in 2022, an overall increase of more than 1,000%.”
Here is the GOA lawsuit. Our buddy Stephen Stamboulieh is involved in this. Godspeed to Stephen.
Here is a video of a home FFL in Texas trying to fight the power.
Look folks, it doesn’t matter if you’re a manufacturer, distributor, store-front FFL or home FFL. Certain things must be done to stay in business. You must be error-free. You must engage in the tools for reduction of human errors, STAR (stop, think, act and review), independent verification, self-check, etc., etc. You cannot mark down the wrong serial number on a Form 4473. This is the case not because it’s the moral or right thing to do. I consider the entire schema of firearm serialization to be unconstitutional and immoral. Furthermore, those who enforce this unconstitutional and immoral practice are communists.
You must do it to stay in business. Obtain help. Hire another worker to check behind you. Make it the sole responsibility of one of the workers to check the forms. This is your livelihood.
By the way, the error rates from lowest to highest in industries is as follows. (1) Commercial Nuclear Power where tens of thousands of manipulations are performed each day, from opening or closing valves, turning pumps on or off, venting systems, calibrating transmitters, and so on, (2) The Airline Industry (whose error rate is higher than nuclear power, but still relatively low considering all of the flights and equipment manipulations every day), (3) the Pharmaceutical Industry (whose error rate is very high according to an executive with whom I talked), and finally, (4) The Medical Profession. A Major Study by Harvard and Johns Hopkins found that over 800,000 Americans are killed/seriously injured every year due to medical errors and misdiagnoses.
But they want to shut down the FFLs. You must be better than them.
From the clownish behavior of the generals simping for the Woke crowd, to the obscene pullout of Afghanistan, to the lower PT standards of all branches of the military, to the recycling of female candidates for Ranger school, to Marine Corps officer candidates who have to use GPS to pass the land navigation course, to the rusting ships, to the crashing ships at sea, and on it goes. How could it get any worse?
She, along with a ten other Marines, a Soldier and a Sailor, was killed by the enemy doing exactly what you see in this picture – helping the innocent.
She was 23; she was 2-years old when the attacks of 911 started the path down to where she found herself that day in service to her nation.
Nicole Gee, 23, was one of 13 service members who died in a suicide blast at Kabul Airport in 2021 alongside 170 desperate Afghans seeking to leave the beleaguered country.
…
Gee’s body was first flown to her hometown of Roseville, California for a ceremony.
But her family was told they would be responsible for taking her body to her final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery, Florida Representative Mills claimed.
Honoring Our Fallen, a nonprofit which helps the families of fallen American service members, paid for the family to move Gee’s remains to Virginia using a private jet.
Mills’ office said the option for the defense department to decline to pay for the transportation of her body was allowed by a change to last year’s National Defense Authorization Act.
It states the secretary of Defense may provide a fallen service member’s family ‘a commercial air travel use waiver for the transportation of deceased remains of [a] military member who dies inside a theater of combat operations.’
Republican politician Mills said the Defense Department should pay for transporting the bodies of those who have died serving their countries and not their families.
‘Typically, our fallen heroes are flown back home for a solemn service and then laid to a final rest at Arlington Cemetery with the utmost respect and honor,’ he told Fox News.
‘It is an egregious injustice that grieving families were burdened to shoulder the financial strain of honoring their loved ones.
So now in the middle of the obscene surrender and pullout, a woman (who shouldn’t have been in combat anyway) died, and the family has to sustain the burial cost if they want her buried at Arlington.
Who with any sense would enlist in or seek a commission in the U.S. military today?
Well, this is extremely disappointing. I have several boxes of this sitting around. Ammo manufacturers need to understand that exploding bullets don’t jive with hunting.
At summary judgment, the district court found that the two challenged provisions in the Rule exceeded the statutory jurisdiction and authority of the ATF and vacated the entire Rule per the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(C). The district court rejected a stay pending appeal but granted a seven-day administrative stay to allow the ATF to bring an emergency appeal.
Because the ATF has not demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on the merits, nor irreparable harm in the absence of a stay, we DENY the government’s request to stay the vacatur of the two challenged portions of the Rule. “[V]acatur . . . reestablish[es] the status quo ante,” Defense Distributed v. Platkin, 55 F.4th 486, 491 (5th Cir. 2022), which is the world before the Rule became effective. This effectively maintains, pending appeal, the status quo that existed for 54 years from 1968 to 2022.
The ATF is likely correct, however, that the vacatur was overbroad. The district court analyzed the legality of only two of the numerous provisions of the Rule, which contains an explicit severability clause. See 87 Fed. Reg. at 24730. Where a court holds specific portions of a rule unlawful, severance is preferred when doing so “will not impair the function of the [rule] as a whole, and there is no indication that the regulation would not have been passed but for its inclusion.” K Mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 486 U.S. 281, 294 (1988); see also Sw. Elec. Power Co. v. EPA, 920 F.3d 999, 1033 (5th Cir. 2019) (vacating only challenged portions of a rule). Because the agency has shown a strong likelihood of success on its assertion that the vacatur of the several non-challenged parts of the Rule was overbroad, we STAY the vacatur, pending appeal, as to the non-challenged provisions.
We sua sponte EXPEDITE the appeal to the next available oral argument calendar. To allow time for additional proceedings as appropriate, this order is administratively STAYED for 10 days.
I’m not sure what all of this means, but according to the decision, throwing out the entirety of the new frame and receiver rule would have vacated several non-challenged provisions.
It’s good to see, however, that the Fifth Circuit doesn’t believe the ATF can win on the challenged provisions of the new rule.
Note that the First Circuit has held that taking photos and video in public is a right that is sufficiently “clearly established” that those who violated it can’t claim qualified immunity.
If they don’t want you to film them, they have something to hide.
For cops to claim they shouldn’t be filmed would be like me, a professional engineer, saying that I have a right to perform calculations and designs and no one has a right to review them, nor should I be held accountable for them.
That sort of immature thinking is reserved for little children who get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Good. This was always going to happen, it should be sooner rather than later.
They’ll get a good dose of the facts now, including the pesky one on the FBI refusing to allow the ATF to examine the weapons allegedly used in the Las Vagas shooting.
And by the way, never forget that Donal Trump gave you the bump stock ban, and the corollary empowered ATF who now feels no compunction about making up law out of whole cloth – because Trump gave them permission to do it. Donald Trump owns the bump stock ban and the current ATF. It’s his. It belongs to him. It has his name on it.
I do wish that my name could be on this brief as a petitioner, but I never felt compelled to own a bump stock – until now so I could be on that brief.
1 year, 4 months ago
