The AT 4 is an antitank rocket invented in Sweden and made in Sweden and the US. US forces used it in Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan. (The US Army calls it “Lightweight Multipurpose Weapon M136.”) You can not reload the AT 4; It’s disposable. Once you have fired the missile that comes with it the remaining tube is an inert non-weapon, not even heavy enough to make a decent club. Even if you managed to get another rocket from somewhere the tube is not strong enough for a second shot.

But the CNN field reporter calmly assures us that since it’s “US made” it must have been smuggled in from somewhere. The “International Security Expert” LAPD has consulting for their gun buyback makes sonorous noises about an “RPG Launcher” and “assault weapons.” As someone hired to undermine the Second Amendment he’s earned his thirty pieces of silver. Candy Crowley and the field reporter wonder about how many other rockets got smuggled in.

Well… Maybe someone did smuggle in a pair of working AT 4s. After all, our borders are so porous you can smuggle in an entire Tyrannosaurus skeleton.  And maybe Los Angeles is such a war zone that someone fired off a couple of antitank rockets without anyone noticing. Or maybe.. Just maybe.. something that’s been happening since we changed from having mobs to having armies happened. Perhaps these were expended units smuggled from a military base in the States and sold to a surplus store to raise quick cash  a couple of days before payday.

It’s an INERT SHELL weighing about six pounds. It’s less dangerous than an empty steel ammo can, which has sharp corners. It’s only good as a display piece in somebody’s man cave, whence someone probably liberated it to trade in for gift cards right before Christmas. Don’t believe me? Here’s FM 3-23.25, “Shoulder-Launched Munitions,” in PDF format. In chapter 2 you’ll find that if you have to retreat and leave a bunch behind the fastest way to destroy a bunch of  AT 4s is to fire them. They are then useless as weapons. If you go all the way down to Appendix B you’ll see a heavier metal lined thing that looks like an AT 4, the M237. It has a narrow opening and won’t handle the real 84 mm rounds, just skinny little practice rockets. Sections about the M237 with the skinny little practice rockets (“subcaliber munitions” in the manual) is also the only place where you will find anything about reloading anywhere in the manual.

The gun grabbers count on the media being ill-informed and shrieking over and over in a horrified voice “They had ROCKET LAUNCHERS!” They also count on people believing that corporate media tell the truth. You likely already knew how unlikely it was that major media would tell the truth about guns while they’re not just cheer leading, but actively pushing an anti gun agenda.

Or it could just be that everybody involved was just plain stupid. There’s one way to find out. Someone living in Los Angeles who still has Christmas paper rolls may want to spray paint the inner cardboard tubes olive-green and scrawl “ROKIT LUNCHER” on the side in Magic Marker to sell at the next LAPD gun buy back.

Cross posted from Beregond’s Bar.

Having your wife die is about the worst thing that can happen to you. Not even waking up unable to move my arms and legs with a machine breathing for me through a hole in my throat matches it. I’ve experienced both, losing your wife sucks more. She’s your WIFE. You’re supposed to provide for her and protect her. When your wife dies you feel like you have FAILED, no matter how irrational it might be.

Years later, I’m haunted by “If only ….” and it was a heart problem that took my wife. If only I had tried harder to get her to see a doctor. If only I had gone to the house sooner when she didn’t answer the phone. “If only…” Those things still haunt me today. I’ve been over it thousands of times in my mind, and intellectually I know there was nothing more I could have done. But that doesn’t stop the feelings when I’m alone at night, or when I think about it too much.

Now think about Joe Soptic. He apparently isn’t terribly bright, as his phrasing when talking about the buyout offer he declined was “they tried to buy our jobs out from under us.” He has failed to understand that those jobs were going away, no matter what. The questions were whether enough people would take the buyout offer to avoid layoffs, and whether the buyout and other efforts would be enough for the company to survive. (If he does understand this, then it’s something else to add to the burden of guilt, which I’ll talk about shortly.)

Joe gets a layoff notice. Unless the buyout had reduced the number of employees that would be jobless when the plant shut down to under 50, Federal law required a 60 day notice. (This is the same WARN Act that the White House is telling defense contractors to ignore so that mass layoff notices don’t arrive days before the election.) Joe has two months to begin his job search. He said nothing about searching for a job before the layoff, just that it took him six months after the layoff to find a new job. So he blew an opportunity to get ahead of everyone else at his steel mill in the job search.

Joe’s new job doesn’t pay as well, and he doesn’t buy health insurance for her. No problem at this point, she has insurance through her employer. But a couple of years later she gets injured and can’t work any more. Unless he had an unusually generous insurance plan, he can’t add her until the next open enrollment period. Open enrollment typically rolls around once a year. It was over two years until she was diagnosed with cancer, and then died. That means he went through at least one, and probably two open enrollment periods.

Then she got sick. He probably worried, but when he finally took her to a doctor it was too late. 22 days later she was dead.

“If only….” haunts me, and my wife died due to a heart problem. Given the string of decisions (including not signing her up during open enrollment after she lost her job) “If only” must be a demon beating Joe Soptic with a cruel lash. The only alternative is to find a villain somewhere. Soptic found a villain, in the form of Mitt Romney.  It’s not his fault, he didn’t fail his wife, it’s that rich Romney bastard. His life was fine before Romney’s company came along and bought the place where he worked.

Joe Soptic isn’t using his dead wife. He’s driven by pain, guilt, and hatred of the villain he conjured to deflect his feelings of guilt. The people using the death of Soptic’s wife are the Obama supporting Priorities USA Super PAC, and the Obama campaign.

Cross posted from Beregond’s Bar.

The first, and the one getting all the headlines, was Amendment 1 to the state constitution, which defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. It passed 61% to 39%. It might have passed by even more, but it was specifically written to ban civil unions as well. For many, including me, that was a deal breaker. (My own opinion is that everyone should have a civil union, then add a wedding on top if they want one. For details see “Civil Unions for Everyone!” from a couple of years ago.) The hate has already started, as is shown by the collection of tweets at Twitchy with gems like “go kill yourselves, you rednecks.”

But of all the North Carolina results, the one I found most interesting was at the very top of the page. President Barack Obama ran unopposed on the Democratic ticket. Running completely unopposed, Barack Obama got 79.20% of the vote, with 20.80% voting for “No Preference.” That is, with no opponent the president could not even get 80% of DEMOCRATS to vote for him.

Up till now, the conventional wisdom was that North Carolina was a swing state, with Obama in the lead. The first sign of a break in that narrative was a NY Times breakdown of swing states on Monday that left North Carolina off the list. It looks like the New York Times had some pretty good intelligence on that score if Obama can’t even get 80% of Democrats when unopposed.

Cross posted from Beregond’s Bar.

Sarah Rumpf, one of the top political bloggers in Florida, was at the debate on Thursday night. She was sitting only a few rows from where the booing originated, and tweeted just afterwards

FTR that was ONLY 1 or 2 people who booed at the gay soldier’s question & LOTS of people shushed at him. #FloridaP5 #gopdebate #sayfie

If you pursue her timeline on Twitter you’ll see that she was explaining that it was one or two with those around them trying to get them to stop. Unfortunately, horrified hissing doesn’t carry as well  as intentional loud booing from a couple of jerks with deep voices in a large mostly empty room with concrete floors, so what the eyewitnesses saw and heard didn’t make it to microphones up on stage.

Sarah was there and I wasn’t, so you should read her account over at Sunshine State Sarah. You should read the whole thing so that you know the truth when the lie surfaces.

A couple of rude jerks aren’t the whole hall, and the Left and their MSM allies should not be allowed to get away with a lie.

Cross Posted from Beregond’s Bar.

The post office lost $8.5 billion last year. This year they probably will only ( ! ) lose $8.3 billion. And they’re running out of money. It would be bad enough if it was Postal Service money and a bankruptcy would cure things, but it’s our money. The US Postal Service has a $15 billion line of credit from the US Government, and by the end of the fiscal year (which ends this month) they will be out of our money.

Five years ago the Post Office was in trouble and Congress bailed them out. The US Government took on a greater share of the pension and retirement medical costs of  former US Military members who went to work at the Postal Service, which eliminated most of their deficit. Congress also extended a $15 billion dollar line of credit. The price on the Postal Service side was that they would have to fully fund their retirement obligations and the health care plan for retirees.

Ever since then, the requirement to fully fund the pensions and benefits of retirees has been represented by both the Postal Service and the unions that represent the postal workers as an unfair and unusual burden on the Post Office. It may be unusual. The retirement systems for California public employees were underfunded by over half a trillion dollars as of April, 2010. What falling stock prices have done to it since then probably gives the trustees ulcers. That requiring that the Postal Service actually fund its’ future obligations is considered “unusual” in governmental and quasi-governmental circles is a symptom of the nation’s larger problem.

When you start setting aside money for future retirement expenses you know that some people aren’t going to collect. Some will leave the job before becoming vested. Some will get fired (yes, even in a government union environment.) And some just won’t live long enough to collect. So there is an over payment for retirement costs, especially in an organization with over half a million employees. Even the GAO is OK with refunding overpayments or suspending payments till the overpayments are used up. The debate is about how big the overpayment is.

If you look at the comment thread for this Businessweek article you’ll find defenders of the post office claiming that the over payment is $75 billion, and if they had all that money everything would be hunky-dory. It’s true that $75 billion would be considerably more than a shot in the arm for the post office, but $75 billion is everything paid in since the last time Congress bailed out the Postal Service. In other words, the Postal Service and its’ unions want to go to a system of paying for future retirements out of future income. This, of course, assumes that there will actually be future income.

The House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform held hearings last March about the problems. Between those hearings and assorted news stories and editorials, it became clear that something would have to be done. In May Senator Carper (D-DE) introduced a bill that would provide some modest deregulation, but also lift the requirement that retiree pensions and benefits be funded at the time they are accrued by the employee. (One part of the deregulation might also permit the Postmaster General to select the Inspector General for the Postal Service, a recipe for mischief.)

This amounts to a $75 billion bailout of the Postal Service. The automaker bailout was only $57 billion. But to understand why it is a bailout you have to understand a bit of history. From 1792 (when Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General) until 1971 the Post Office was officially the US Postal Department, a department of the Executive Branch of the US government. As a government agency they had government retirement benefits. In 1971 it was semi-privatized, and became the US Postal Service. It was officially a separate company, but everyone knew the government was behind it and would come running if there was trouble (as they did five years ago.)

For those working there at the time of the split it meant that their pension and retirement health benefits now had two entities that were responsible for paying. Some of you reading this might think they must all be gone by now, but someone starting in 1970 at age 18 would now be 59, with six years of work ahead of him before becoming one of the 300,000 postal workers expected to retire by 2020. But it’s not just the dwindling number of people who worked at the Post Office in 1971 that are involved. One can move from government service into the post office and carry over your government pension. Thus, any former government employee has a pension that the US government and the Postal Service are jointly responsible for. Likewise, former military pension & benefits carry over to the Postal Service (though as noted earlier the government took on a greater share of that expense five years ago.)

So not only a relatively few old folks are at risk. Anyone working at the Post Office who used to be a federal employee or a member of the military has a pension and health benefits that the Postal Service and the US government are jointly responsible for. If the Postal Service is unable to pay those costs out of shrinking revenues, the taxpayer is left holding the sack.

Congressman Issa (R-CA) and Congressman Ross (R-FL) have introduced HR 2309 that would remove some regulations that make the Postal Service particularly inefficient. For instance, at the moment it is illegal to close a post office just for financial reasons. In other words, the Postal Service that was spun off from the government to act much like a private company can’t take basic cost cutting measures that any company would take for granted. Nor can they put ads on their ubiquitous vehicles. It also allows delivery to be reduced to five days a week, which the Postmaster General has requested. While the short title of the bill is “Postal Reform Act of 2011″ the usual game of cute acronyms was played with the commission established in Article I:

This subtitle may be cited as the ‘‘Commission on Postal Reorganization Act’’ or the ‘‘CPR Act’’.

Five days a week is not as shocking as it might sound. I get Christmas cards, birthday cards, thank you notes, wedding invitations, and condolence notes via snail mail. Pretty much everything else has been paid via computer for a decade. The last time I wrote a check (to a plumber a couple of years ago) the bank actually called to make sure that I had written it. I literally can’t remember the last time I wrote a check and dropped it in the mail to pay a bill.  And I’m not alone – According to an April 2010 GAO report mail volume dropped by 36 million pieces (17%) from 2007 to 2009 (three fiscal years.)

The default on paying the next installment of retirement funds is almost upon us, as Businessweek noted:

On Mar. 2, Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe warned Congress that his agency would default on $5.5 billion of health-care costs set aside for its future retirees scheduled for payment on Sept. 30 unless the government comes to the rescue. “At the end of the year, we are out of cash,” Donahoe said. He noted that the unusual requirement was enacted five years ago by Congress before mail started to disappear.

(Note again that people who work in government and government-related agencies have a mindset that thinks it is “unusual” to set aside money to pay your debts.)

Now the Committee on Oversight & Government Reform (where Congressman Issa is chairman) has established a web site to inform the public about the problem. It contains links to news stories, the text of HR 2309, fact sheets about the bill (the bill itself is long and dull reading,) comparisons to senator Carper’s bill, videos from the hearings last March, and a tool that lets you pick your own solution to the problem by picking various ways to save money.

It’s hard to think about the Post Office having problems. The Mail Man (now “Letter Carrier”) is an enduring piece of Americana. In elementary school we tour a post office, looking at gleaming machines sorting hundreds of letters a minute. You may even have been made to memorize the unofficial Post Office Creed:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

The mail is just there. You know about what time yours will arrive. In older neighborhoods it goes in a box hanging outside the door, or through a slot in the door. In rural or more recent construction the mail box is at the curb, and the carrier arrives in a small utility vehicle. If you’re a tiny community way out in the sticks you have gang boxes, which look like someone cut part of the wall of post office boxes out of an old post office and mounted them on a pair of poles at a wide spot in the road. The mail just IS, and we only think of it if it’s late or misdelivered.

One more thing: The US Post Office is BIG. Really, really big. As Businessweek put it in May of 2011:

The USPS is a wondrous American creation. Six days a week it delivers an average of 563 million pieces of mail—40 percent of the entire world’s volume. For the price of a 44¢ stamp, you can mail a letter anywhere within the nation’s borders. The service will carry it by pack mule to the Havasupai Indian reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Mailmen on snowmobiles take it to the wilds of Alaska. If your recipient can no longer be found, the USPS will return it at no extra charge. It may be the greatest bargain on earth.

It takes an enormous organization to carry out such a mission. The USPS has 571,566 full-time workers, making it the country’s second-largest civilian employer after Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). It has 31,871 post offices, more than the combined domestic retail outlets of Wal-Mart, Starbucks (SBUX), and McDonald’s (MCD). Last year its revenues were $67 billion, and its expenses were even greater. Postal service executives proudly note that if it were a private company, it would be No. 29 on the Fortune 500.

But all that is at the heart of the problem. The Postal Service ceased to be a part of the Executive Branch of the US Government in 1971. It was performing what was essentially a commercial service, and already had 100% market penetration. Even if courier services cherry picked some fast package deliveries there was no competition.

Times have changed since 1971, but by and large the Postal Service hasn’t kept up. The machines are newer, there are more routes that use vehicles instead of door to door delivery, most Post Offices are cleaner and in better repair than I remember as a kid in the 60′s, but the mind set has not changed. They deliver letters, they deliver packages, they sell stamps and other things related to those functions. The problem is that the times have changed. The number of pieces of snail mail I send in a month is usually zero. The number of pieces of mail in my box that are not junk mail is also usually zero. Looking at the issues facing the Postal Service the GAO found:

USPS’s business model is not viable due to USPS’s inability to reduce costs sufficiently in response to continuing mail volume and revenue declines. Mail volume declined 36 billion pieces (17 percent) over the last 3 fiscal years(2007 through 2009) with the recession accelerating shifts to electronic communications and payments. USPS lost nearly $12 billion over this period,despite achieving billions in cost savings by reducing its career workforce by over 84,000 employees, reducing capital investments, and raising rates.However, USPS had difficulty in eliminating costly excess capacity, and its revenue initiatives have had limited results. USPS also is nearing its $15 billion borrowing limit with the U.S. Treasury and has unfunded pension and retiree health obligations and other liabilities of about $90 billion. In 2009, Congress reduced USPS’s retiree health benefit payment by $4 billion to address a looming cash shortfall, but USPS still recorded a loss of $3.8 billion. Given its financial problems and outlook, USPS cannot support its current level of service and operations. USPS projects that volume will decline by about 27 billion pieces over the next decade, while revenues will stagnate; costs will rise; and, without major changes, cumulative losses could exceed $238 billion.

The Postal Service has been broken for a long time. Go to the committee web site and read about it. Use the tool at the site to find your own solution to the issue. Then don’t be silent – Contact your congressperson and senators.

Cross posted from Beregond’s Bar.

Cross posted from Beregond’s Bar.

The Obama administration is seeking to limit the importation of some shotguns via rulings made by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF.) ATF has issued a “Study on the Importability of Certain Shotguns” which provides the logical underpinnings for a ban of some weapons. In Part 1 we looked at how the ATF defined “sporting purpose” to exclude the popular action and practical shooting sports. In Part 2 we saw how several features that would cause an imported shotgun to be banned are useful in home defense. In Part 3 we looked at how the unconstitutional Gun Control Act of 1968, which introduced the “sporting purpose” test for importation, came to be. In this final installation we’ll look at the implications of the current study on pistols, rifles, and domestic shotguns.

The Supreme court decisions in District of Columbia v Heller and McDonald v Chicago moved the earth under the feet of the ATF. The decisions clearly established that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, it can be exercised for any lawful purpose, and that it applies to the states.  This negates many of the firearms related parts of the ATF’s job. But like any good bureaucracy, ATF has its’ fingers in its’ ears and is shouting “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” while planning how to overcome this setback. Apparently the ATF’s plan is to say “The Supremes told DC, and told the states, but they didn’t tell ME! Besides, the ruling says that there is space for some regulation!” The current study certainly foreshadows some regulation.

Before the Heller and McDonald cases were decided it could plausibly (if incorrectly) be argued that the “sporting purpose” test that is applied to imports, and was part of the justification for the 1994 Clinton Gun Ban, was regulating a privilege and thus legal. That is no longer the case. The ATF is laying the groundwork to restrict what is undeniably a right. This goes beyond simple government overreach to the realm of violating the oaths of office for those involved.

But it’s not just imports that are in the crosshairs, as Jeff Knox points out in The Knox Update:

One of the most important things about this ATF “study” and proposed shotgun importation ban is that it lays the groundwork for much broader, general shotgun restrictions.  Importation is not the only place where federal gun laws apply this unconstitutional “sporting purpose test,” it is also found in the National Firearms Act (NFA), the laws dealing with machineguns and destructive devices.  Under the NFA, any firearm with a bore greater than .5 inch is a “destructive device” – in the same category as mortars and Howitzers.  The only exception is for “shotguns which the secretary finds are generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes.”  If the secretary (in this case Attorney General Eric Holder) finds that certain shotguns are not importable because they are unsuitable for sporting purposes he must then explain why virtually identical guns, with the same features, are considered suitable for sporting purposes with regard to the NFA.  How can he declare them non-sporting on the one hand and not declare identical guns as non-sporting on the other?

One factor that jumps out from the current ATF study is that it differs from the Clinton gun ban in a critical way. The Clinton ban looked at guns and said if it could accept a high capacity magazine and had any 2 other characteristics then it was banned. Thus you could have a magazine and a pistol grip, or a magazine and night sights, and still be legal. Few people missed having a bayonet lug, and grenade launchers and grenades had essentially been banned from civilian hands since the NFA became law in 1934.  The current study says that any ONE item on a list, including a magazine that holds more than five rounds or a place to attach a flashlight so you can see the burglar in your home, and the gun is banned.

So the problem doesn’t end with shotguns. The current study refers to the conclusions drawn in prior ATF studies of rifles in 1989 and 1998, and handguns in 1968. It also draws on the NFA and the GCA (Gun Control Act of 1968) to justify the “sporting purpose” test, and the narrow interpretation that the ATF places on the test. The justifications are all linked together, like a knitted sweater. Pull on the piece of yarn called “imported shotguns” and you find when it’s unraveled enough that you’re tugging on the “domestic shotguns” yarn. Only now the “imported rifle” bit of yarn is hanging loose, just begging for someone to tug on it. Unravel that a bit and you reach “domestic rifles.” A similar bit of unraveling is likely to happen with the piece of yarn labelled “handgun.”

In other words, this report lays the groundwork to impose by regulatory fiat an entirely unconstitutional gun ban more draconian than the Clinton gun ban that expired in 2004, and bypasses Congress and the Constitution to do so. It needs to be stopped now. The ATF is accepting comments on the report until the end of April, 2011. I urge you to comment, and to send a copy of your comments to your congressional representatives.

• Comments may be submitted by e-mail to shotgunstudy@atf.gov
• By fax to (202)648-9601.Faxed comments may not exceed 5 pages.
• All comments must include name and mailing address.

This is not just an issue for gun owners. This is an issue of the Obama administration overreaching, and violating the Constitution in the process. Restricting our rights by regulatory fiat should concern every American.

Cross Posted from Beregond’s Bar. ]]> http://www.redstate.com/beregond/2011/04/18/banning-guns-by-changing-definitions-part-4/feed/ 1 http://www.redstate.com/beregond/2011/04/17/banning-guns-by-changing-definitions-part-3/ http://www.redstate.com/beregond/2011/04/17/banning-guns-by-changing-definitions-part-3/#comments Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:00:15 +0000 Beregond (Diary) http://www.redstate.com/beregond/?p=32 Read More »]]>

Since it is unlikely that any gun control legislation could get through the existing congress the Obama administration is seeking to restrict the import of certain shotguns by having the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to change the rules. As we saw in Part 1, the tool is a study entitled “ATF Study on the Importability of Certain Shotguns.” The study cites the history of gun control laws and resulting regulation. In short, firearms must meet one of four tests to be imported, and the most common of those is the rule is the sporting purpose test.

the Attorney General shall approve applications for importationwhen the firearms are generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes (the “sporting purposes test”).

The study then spends a lot of time showing that hunting, trap and skeet, and target shooting are sports, but plinking and practical shooting sports are not REALLY sports, and therefore guns that are particularly suitable for, or readily adaptable to those sports shouldn’t be allowed into the country.

In Part 2 we looked at the characteristics that the ATF study determined were not sporting. We also looked at how a number of those features made the shotguns under consideration for regulatory ban made those shotguns particularly suitable for home defense.

But there is a far more basic objection that must be raised to this new attempt at regulatory gun ban- Nowhere in the constitution of the United States is there anything about a “sporting purpose.” The second amendment says:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Like all rights of Americans, the rights exist because you are a person. The Constitution is a contract we have with the central government to protect those rights against all enemies, foreign and domestic. One of the enumerated rights is the right to keep and bear arms. Nary a “sporting purpose” in sight in the entire document. So where did it come from?

The Gun Control Act of 1968 was a simplistic answer to complex times. In a span of five years we had experienced the assassination of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, and Bobby Kennedy. There were riots in over 100 American cities that year, some race riots, others protesting the war in Viet Nam. (While the term “Chicago Riots” usually conjures up the image of the riots during the Democratic National Convention in August of that year, there had been a Chicago race riot in April of that year that left a number of people dead.)

Moreover, just as Viet Nam was the first televised war, the domestic unrest of the 60s was our first experience with mass media riots.  We can see a few grainy black and white photos of the Chicago race riots of 1919, but in the 1960s the violence first came into our living rooms, and joined us at the dinner table. It wasn’t the instant communication we have now, but it was a radical change made possible by civilian active communications satellites, which had first been launched when JFK was in office. Day after day, protests, riots and crime stories made us wonder if America was coming apart, and what could be done.

Enter the Gun Control Act of 1968. In addition to reasonable restrictions like banning drug addicts and criminals from owning firearms a wide variety of weapons were banned with the collusion of US gun makers, who used a push to “control crime” as a way to eliminate competition. Most military surplus weapons from overseas were banned, and we began to hear about the infamous “Saturday Night Special,” a term applied mostly to cheap, poorly-made handguns from overseas, which was often the only gun a poor person could afford for self defense. The Act included a point system for importability, small size, small caliber, and fixed sights were some of the things that counted against a gun.

On the flip side, high quality expensive guns that were ruled suitable for “sporting purposes” could still be imported. There were characteristics that were considered “good” for sporting purposes such as adjustable target sights and target grips. Ever wonder why every Glock has finger grooves on the grip? That makes it a target grip, which is worth 5 points. Indeed, at one point Glocks were imported into the US with click adjustable sights, suitable for target work, in order to meet the point count. Once the guns were in the country the target sights were replaced by the fixed sight that Glock owners know and love (or hate) today.

In the end, the Gun Control Act of 1968, supposedly passed to deal with issues raised by the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK didn’t deal with any of the weapons used to kill Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy. Instead it protected the domestic market for US gun makers and controlled the guns most likely to be used by poor blacks to defend themselves.  Corporate welfare takes many forms, and protectionism is one of them. Public hysteria, corporate greed, and the need of politicians to appear to be doing something combined as they so often have to curtail our liberties.

The US Supreme Court decided in District of Columbia v Heller:

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Many jurisdictions pointed out that the District of Columbia is a special case, and that the ruling did not apply to the states. In McDonald v Chicago the Supreme Court said that the Second Amendment did apply to the states. This leads us to our current situation. We have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms. The ATF, despite their stated mission to protect us from “the illegal use and trafficking of firearms” actually determines what the legal use and legal way to buy, sell, import and export are. That is, the ATF exists to limit our rights, and is being used by the current administration to remove rights from us.

In the final installation of this series we’ll look at how a ban on importing certain shotguns that look mean and nasty can be used to work backwards to restrict access not just to the weapons that you can no longer bring into the country, but weapons you may already own. This is not limited to shotguns. The current attempt to regular shotgun imports has implications for all sorts of firearms.

Cross Posted from Beregond’s Bar.

As we saw in Part 1, the Obama administration is seeking to ban the importation of some popular shotgun models that are made overseas. The method being used is borrowed from Humpty Dumpty:

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’

Unable to get legislation passed, the administration seeks to master us with their mastery of words. In this case the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is seeking to master the definition of the term “sporting use” to “traditional” sports, things similar to what might have been found in 1934 when the Treasury Department first began regulating firearms. The ATF “Study on the Importability of Certain Shotguns” (PDF) limits “sporting purpose.”

However, consistent with past court decisions and Congressional intent, the working group recognized hunting and other more generally recognized or formalized competitive events similar to the traditional shooting sports of trap, skeet, and clays.

In order to decide what shotguns fit the “sporting purpose” definition the study comes up with a list of characteristics that aren’t sporting. Nobody has yet taken to bayoneting deer or skeet as far as I know, so I’m not going to raise a big stink about bayonet lugs being on the list of features that aren’t particularly suited for sporting purposes. (Please stop shouting that the Constitution of the United States says nothing about “sporting purpose.” We’ll look at why the “sporting purpose” rule violates the constitution in Part 3.)

One major problem (aside from the constitution) is that many of the features the ATF study group settled on make a shotgun particularly useful for self defense, especially home defense. Here are the characteristics that the study has decided are unsuitable for sporting use:

(1) Folding, telescoping, or collapsible stocks;

(2) bayonet lugs;

(3) flash suppressors;

(4) magazines over 5 rounds, or a drum magazine;

(5) grenade-launcher mounts;

(6) integrated rail systems (other than on top of the receiver or barrel);

(7) light enhancing devices;

(8) excessive weight (greater than 10 pounds for 12 gauge or smaller);

(9) excessive bulk (greater than 3 inches in width and/or greater than 4 inches in depth);

(10) forward pistol grips or other protruding parts designed or used for gripping the shotgun with the shooter’s extended hand.

Some of these features, such as folding stocks and larger capacity magazines clearly are useful in sports if you include practical shooting sports. But as we’ve seen, Humpty Dumpty said that “sporting purposes” means what HE means it to mean, and practical shooting sports are Right Out. But some of the features are important to people who don’t want to hop over obstacles, shoot through simulated windows, or have their shooting timed and scored. Several of the features on the list are important to people who want to defend their home.

A house often has narrow doorways or hallways, and furniture can interfere with the movement of a long gun. By federal law, a shotgun barrel must be at least 18 inches long. So the place we can easily shorten a shotgun to make it easier to navigate confined spaces is at the stock end. A folding or collapsible stock lets you maneuver in confined spaces but still be able to shoulder the weapon for better accuracy when you have time and space. So this feature that the ATF wants to ban from import by regulation is applicable to home defense.

If you’re operating in a confined space with the stock folded then you need to really grip the front end. This helps with both aiming and controlling the recoil if you have to shoot. A vertical or pistol grip can also help you swing the front of the gun faster when you identify an intruder. Again, a forward pistol or vertical grip can be an effective part of a home defense shotgun.

It’s 3 am. The wake up call you got wasn’t on the phone, it was the sound of a window breaking, or the sound of someone moving around downstairs. Odds are that if you pause to get dressed at all it’s just to grab a pair of pants. More likely you’re wearing whatever you were sleeping in, and don’t have any place to carry extra ammunition. Whatever ammunition you have in or mounted on the gun is all you’ve got. Probably there’s only one or two intruders, and maybe you’ll hit each one with the first shot, but do you really want to bet your family’s life on it? I hope you never need to defend your family at 3 am, but if you do wouldn’t you rather have a few rounds left over rather than run out? Having more than five rounds will enhance the safety of your family.

Since it’s 3 am, you’ve probably turned the lights off in most of the house. One hand is on the rear pistol grip of the shotgun, the other is on the forward grip (vertical or not.) Your third hand then holds the flashlight.

No third hand? There’s are a couple of simple solutions. One is a light enhancing device, that is, a night sight. Those are rather expensive for a shotgun that only gets fired in practice, so another form of light enhancement is more common in the form of a flashlight. But there’s still that third hand problem. The solution is an accessory rail mounted to the side or beneath the barrel. Flashlights just clamp on there, and the flashlight shows you exactly what you are aiming at. Seeing what you are about to shoot seems like a reasonable precaution when investigating an odd noise in your house, but that’s not sporting, so the Obama administration doesn’t want you to do that.

The ATF is taking comments on their report until the end of April 2011. You can submit comments by sending a fax of not more than 5 pages to (202)648-9601 or sending e-mail to shotgunstudy@atf.gov. All comments must include your name and mailing address.

In Part 3 of this report we’ll look at some of the constitutional objections to the “sporting purposes” test and some of the other gun control implications of the administration’s effort to do gun control by regulation that it’s unlikely they could currently get through congress.

Cross Posted from Beregond’s Bar.

The Obama administration is seeking once again to do via regulation what they would never be able to do via legislation. This time shotguns are in the crosshairs, specifically certain popular imported weapons. Even waving the bloody shirt after congresswoman Giffords was shot only moved a few members of congress, not nearly enough to enact new restrictions. Rather than face a losing fight in congress the administration decided to just emulate Humpty Dumpty from Lewis Caroll’s “Through the Looking Glass.”

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’

Humpty Dumpty in this case is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF,) and the term that is being redefined is “Sporting Use.”  Sporting use is one of the three main thrusts of gun control efforts in America. The other two are racism and  those who openly advocate complete bans except for military and police. (The complete ban advocates often hide under cover of sporting use, but that and the racist history of gun control are topics for another day.

Sporting use was how the original distinction was made about what weapons would be subject to a special tax in the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934, and again in Title II of the Gun Control Act of 1968.  The congressional power to tax was used selectively to make ownership of weapons the government didn’t like burdensome and expensive. This was gun control via the back door, as even the ATF admits. As would become the pattern, politicians found that actually dealing with crime and criminals was difficult and expensive. Blaming guns and passing a law to look like they were doing something about it was much simpler.

In 1968 the idea of “sporting purpose” was made explicit when the import of weapons from overseas was banned unless the US Attorney General certified that it met one of four narrow criteria. One of these was that it was “generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.” This led to a series of studies about what constituted a sporting purpose in 1968, 1989, 1998, and the latest released in January of 2011. (Notice that 3 of the 4 studies were done under Democrat presidents. The fourth was under Bush 41, who ran as a continuation of Reagan but broke his tax pledge and resigned from the NRA.)

The latest study (PDF,) released at the end of January 2011, centers on shotguns and once again pretends that a “sporting purpose” is the only legitimate use for a gun, despite recent Supreme Court rulings that gun ownership is an individual right and that self defense is a legitimate purpose for owning a firearm. The study spends a great deal of time defining just what sporting use is, and carefully excludes the most common sporting use, plinking.

Plinking is just setting up informal targets, often cans or bottles, sometimes paper or steel targets, and doing a bit of informal practice. That you just hung a target or paced off the distance to your informal collection of targets doesn’t mean that you aren’t engaged in a sport, any more than not using a stopwatch to time your last ski run meant that your skiing wasn’t a sport. But insuring that plinking is not considered a sport is central to regulating imports, because you can plink with almost any gun. Therefore the ATF concludes that plinking is “primarily a passtime.”

Dismissing the practical shooting sports takes a good deal more hand waving. The practical shooting sports (which I dabbled in before becoming handicapped) generally involve multiple targets that the shooter must engage, and usually must move in order to reach or see clearly. The targets may also move, swinging, rotating, or popping up for a limited time before vanishing. Usually mixed in with the targets are “no shoot” targets representing innocent bystanders. All of this is done under the relentless pressure of the clock.

Practical shooting sports are a problem for the ATF’s  narrow definition of sporting purpose. They have national organizations with tens of thousands of members, formal rules, and separate competitors by skill level so that there is competition within the brackets. One way that the ATF study gets around this is to ignore the fact that the United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) is not the only bastion of practical shooting, but is just the US regional division of IPSC, the International Practical Shooting Association. After all, if one looks at the IPSC one has to admit that the practical shooting sports are an international phenomenon headquartered in Oakville, Ontario, Canada with divisions in over 80 countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe. Instead we find in the footnotes:

33 Organization websites report these membership numbers: for the United States Practical Shooting Association, approx. 19,000; AmateurTrapshooting Association, over 35,000 active members; National Skeet Shooting Association, nearly 20,000 members; National Sporting ClaysAssociation, over 22,000 members; Single Action Shooting Society, over 75,000 members.

The Single Action Shooting Society at first glance looks like it might be an apples to apples comparison, since it involves pistols, rifles, and shotguns plus movement much as the practical shooting sports do. However there is one huge difference that makes the inclusion of the SASS useful for the ATF- The Single Action Shooting Society is Cowboy Action Shooting. That is, competitors dress as period characters, and use replicas of weapons that were found in the old west. The ATF isn’t (yet) concerned with the importation of inexpensive copies of cowboy weapons from Italy.

But some of the other organizations look like they’re in the same size range as the USPSA, especially if you ignore the novice competitors that don’t join, but show up three or four times a year for a local match. So the study group brings in conservation groups:

34 Organization websites report these membership numbers: Ducks Unlimited, U.S adult 604,902 (Jan. 1, 2010); Pheasants/Quail Forever, over130,000 North American members (2010)

Now the comparison is to conservation organizations. Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever focus on preserving and restoring wildlife habitat. Ducks Unlimited in particular focuses on private acquisition and management of land. These groups are practical environmentalists, some of whom also hunt. (I was a Ducks Unlimited member before I ever owned a gun. The closest I’ve come to taking wild game is a place near my home where the deer like to cross the road at twilight.) Comparing USPSA to Ducks Unlimited is comparing apples to watermelons.

The ATF has invited comments on the study:

All interested persons may submit comments on this study. Comments may be submitted by e-mail to shotgunstudy@atf.gov or by fax to (202)648-9601. Faxed comments may not exceed 5 pages. All comments must include name and mailing address. ATF encourages submission of comments no later than May 1, 2011.

Like Humpty Dumpty the Obama administration is changing the definition of  ”sporting use” in order to ban certain  shotguns. But as we’ll see inPart 2, many of the features that the ATF working group’s study (PDF) says should lead to a shotgun being banned are features that can make a shotgun particularly suitable for home defense.

Cross Posted from Beregond’s Bar.