What the Biden administration could not get the Congress to do, Biden is doing by subversion of federal process.
A different sort of crackdown was unleashed on the nation this week, as an ATF rule published on April 26 finally took effect on Wednesday. The regulation is entitled “Definition of `Frame or Receiver' and Identification of Firearms.” [Federal Register] That rule is so cumbersome, complex, sprawling, and indecipherable that ATF was forced to publish an update to the “final” version on Monday, admitting:
Due to the complexity of this rulemaking process and the resulting significant number of comments and revisions in response, the final rule inadvertently contained some technical errors in the regulatory text that this document corrects. [Federal Register]
(Of course, from the ATF that misspelled its own three-letter acronym on one of its most important publications in 2014 -- a gaffe Joe Biden himself recently repeated in announcing doomed candidate, David Chipman, for the agency’s new director [Newsweek] -- this is perhaps to be expected.)
The rule is being marketed through the credulous anti-gun media as a means of regulating "ghost guns." Ghost guns are unmarked firearms manufactured by those other than federal firearm licensees (FFLs) -- generally a private citizen. Firearms manufacturers have have long been required to stamp firearms with serial numbers, specified markings and to keep detailed records of their production and distribution.
Even with this premise, however, the rule doesn’t make a lot of sense. Ghost guns are no more lethal or dangerous than "mortal" guns. They are simply more difficult to trace back to the original maker or owner.
In the event, the rule does not prohibit the making or possession of personally made, unserialized firearms (and it is unlikely the Second Amendment would allow for such a restriction, as this has been an unbroken practice in the United States since its founding).
Rather, it creates requirements for the marking of personally made firearms that find their way into the inventories of FFLs. But if the concern is that criminals are making firearms for themselves or for other scofflaws, the FFL distribution system is largely irrelevant, as criminals intentionally avoid it and easily bypass it already.
~~~~~~~~
There is the question of how much law enforcement value is actually derived from firearm traces. The phony premise here is that tracing a firearm back to the original retail purchaser gives investigators a “lead” in solving a firearm-related crime.
The firearm that has been in circulation for a long period and has changed hands many times -- which is more often the case than not with crime guns [Time to Crime xls doc] -- identifying the original retail purchaser is likely to be a time-consuming and labor-intensive dead end. That “lead” will likely have turned cold years earlier.
No comments:
Post a Comment