The new direction of the NFA is relatively good news for us, though it's not without some problems — more on those later today. For the most part, though, I'm tickled to death to see it.
But I get that not everyone will see it that way. For many, they're going to buy into the media hysterics and think that we're heading back to the era of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano.
For those who really don't know the laws, I kind of get why they'd think that.
Anti-gunners, who claim to be experts on guns but are anything but, really should know better, but they don't.
Groups that support gun restrictions decried the judge’s ruling and the Justice Department’s decision to let it stand as reckless and argued that the regulations are important for public safety.
In a statement on Friday, John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said Cekada had embraced the “smash-and-grab lawlessness of the Trump administration by attempting to pick and choose which federal gun laws he enforces.”
Under the new guidance, ATF will no longer require registration unless the buyer lives in one of about 15 states that have state laws requiring that people go through the federal permitting process. The registration process will still apply for machine guns and what are considered “destructive devices” under federal law, the Justice Department said.
And in all cases, people will still have to fill out the standard firearms purchasing form, which includes questions about things that would disqualify someone from legal gun ownership, and they also have to pass a background check, officials said.
And that last part is important, because while it is easy to pretend that suddenly there's a free-for-all going on, that's not the case. Everyone still buys via a gun store, still has to fill out a Form 4473, and still gets a background check. The only thing that's changed is the feds forcing everyone to register the weapons before being able to buy one.
Feinblatt is fearmongering here, just like Everytown always does.
It should be noted that the NFA didn't cause a reduction in crime when it passed. That was already under way with the repeal of prohibition. It was the illicit nature of alcohol that caused the problem in the first place. Once that was removed, you had a whole lot less violence in general.
As it stands, people like Feinblatt have been going on about so-called Glock switches for a while, which are all illegal under the NFA and are still illegal under it. Nothing has changed there, but the proliferation of these devices kind of proves another point about the NFA, and that's how little it accomplishes.
Anyone with a hacksaw can cut the barrel off of a shotgun. An AR can be converted to a short-barrel rifle with the simple act of pushing out a couple of pins and dropping a pistol upper into the rifle lower. An AK pistol can be easily converted to a SBR simply by adding a stock. Now, Glocks and similar style handguns are easily converted into machine pistols with a device that was created and manufactured well outside of Glock's control.
The NFA doesn't stop criminals. It's never stopped criminals.
It stops the law-abiding.
Is that the real point? I think you already know.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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