obama-general-IDi-Amin-DadaLegislating from his desk without a Congress he dismisses for its unwillingness to bend to his will, His Excellency Field Marshal President For Life Idi Amin al-Hadji Dada Barack Hussein al-Hadji Obama vastly expanded ATF powers, rewarding Fast and Furious figure B. Todd Jones for his loyalty. At the same ceremony, Jones was sworn in, vowing to make gun owners pay for violent crime.

Administration lapdog Josh Lederman, writing for the Associated Press, squeed with delight at the news:

Striving to take action where Congress would not, the Obama administration announced new steps Thursday on gun control…. President Barack Obama added two more executive actions to a list of 23 steps the White House determined Obama could take on his own to reduce gun violence.

With Jones’ confirmation at ATF, the White House has completed or made significant progress on all but one of the 23 executive actions Obama had previously ordered in January.

Jones’s statement hinted at ATF’s organizational insecurity vis-a-vis the better-established, more-professional FBI and other federal agencies:

“Today is a historic day for ATF. “he agency is now in line with its sister components and has been given the respect it deserves as a federal law enforcement agency with a permanent director. I want Americans to know, ATF is full of hard–working, devoted public servants who are committed to the mission of professional law enforcement. I will lead with the same enthusiasm and dedication that I see daily from the team tasked with protecting our communities from the most violent criminals.”

The problem, from the standpoint of an ATF director, is that the agency is already getting the respect it deserves, which is not much.

Jones, while serving as US Attorney in Minnesota, attended planning meetings for several gunwalking operations, including Fast and Furious, in which thousands of guns were provided to Mexican drug trafficking organizations. The ARTF managers’ and US Attorneys’ intent was for the guns to be used in crimes in Mexico, leading to new American gun laws and more power for ATF. Surprising no one but the scheme’s architects, the crimes spilled over the border. While some hundreds of murders of Mexicans were perfectly acceptable to Jones and his fellows, their “walked” guns were soon used in murders and assaults of several front-line American law enforcement officers. Inside ATF, no one has been held accountable. Indeed, since becoming acting director, Jones has promoted or rewarded all the Fast and Furious figures, except the whistleblowers, whom he has persecuted relentlessly.

Jones personally approved a questionable deal that let one figure escape to a job with a federally-dependent bank — in a subpoena-safe foreign country. And while the man drew his six-figure corporate salary from his new employer, he was still in a no-show position at ATF, drawing a six-figure government salary.

Lederman asserted that the milsurp reimport ban is justified because these guns, mostly World War vintage rifles, “may end up on the streets.” (We’re trying to remember the last time MS-13 rolled with Garands. Help us out in the comments).

Among the entities that will now be forbidden to acquire US-made rifles from their foreign rusting places is the CMP.

He also savaged NFA trusts as “a little-known loophole that lets felons and others circumvent background checks.”

Here are some facts that are well known to the NFA community, and trivially available to Lapdog Lederman, if he were interested:

  1. Number of violent crimes committed with a registered NFA weapon, since 1934: 1 (possibly 2).
  2. Number committed with a weapon that was held by a trust trust: 0.

That one crime was a murder committed, by the way, by a police officer. You know, the only ones that Barack Obama — and Josh Lederman — trust with guns. Patrolman Paul Waller shot one of his informants with a registered MAC-11 in Ohio in 1988. There was reportedly another MG murder in Ohio by a physician, but all internet sources link back to the same .pdf file, which is not online.

The new ATF rules are subject to a legally-required comment period, but it’s a bagatelle. They will neither read nor act on the comments; some low-level flunktionary will be assigned to write responses in the vein of, “the ATF will not reconsider/change/modify the NPRM because the modification would not enable our objective to harass lawful owners combat gun violence.”

As if anyone in ATF has any concerns about gun violence, which they’ve done more to produce in the last few years than La Cosa Nostra. Somewhere in Mexico someone was killed today with a gun provided to the Sinaloa cartel by the ATF. Someone else will be killed with another tomorrow. In a few years it will just be a killing a month — unless Jones resumes his gunwalking policy.

The NFA Trust rule appears to replace an earlier one which removed the CLEO (Chief Law Enforcement Officer) sign off requirement. The most common reasons for employing an NFA Trust are not, as the White House says, to allow “felons, domestic abusers, and others prohibited from having guns can easily evade the required background check and gain access to machine guns or other particularly dangerous weapons”, but to get around an obstreperous anti-gun CLEO, for estate planning, and to allow lending of firearms (which ATF has previously ruled is illegal for individuals to do).

When guns are outlawed, the ATF will still be providing them to outlaws.

Update 2000R

Sorry for the intemperate language, but we reckon you guys understand.

John Lott has responded (he also did not care for the AP article’s slant). Hat tip, Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned.

Update 2010R

Commenter Alan at SNBQ (same link as above) has posted both the old and the new NPRMs on  NFA trusts. The original one eliminated the CLEO signoff and was supported by some NFA folks, including the ATF-cozy NFATCA (If we recall correctly).

We are not lawyers here, and our analysis therefore may be all wet (you not only need to be a lawyer to handle this stuff, but a gun-law lawyer, in our opinion). Don’t ever construe a word we say as legal advice: that’s not our department.

This entry was posted in Consumer Alert!, When Guns Are Outlawed… on by Hognose.

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).

4 thoughts on “Breaking: Obama bans surp reimports, attacks CMP, NFA trusts

Samuel Suggs

This is just Obone showing his hate for our community; the question is how do we kill it in a post Obone America, as well as other import restrictions? The NFA changes really just destroy all the NFA progress we have made since the Hughes amendment so that’s just gonna have to be something we live with until we get a crack at real NFA reform.

Aesop

Can’t we please, for the love of sweet suffering Shiva, consolidate BATFE, DHS, and the TSA, and then abolish them all as an austerity savings measure?

The move would not only save us their budgets and pensions in perpetuity, but would, in one fell swoop, treble the average efficiency and competence of the average federal employee, even if we leave the Postal Service untouched.

Samuel Suggs

That’s a long game political strategy, we can’t even make crap like that work small scale, short term with the worst of the worst (TSA/ATF it’s a bit of a tossup) so why do you think the republicans could manage such a broad brush move? They can’t even seek out their own traitors and stop them from nominating sacrificial can’t win candidates.

Andy

Boobama showing his communist roots.He hates this country,and all of the white people that live in it.Most of ya’ll know all about what I am talking about,and do I need to continue?Be prepared and ready.Keep your powder dry.