Quote of the Day
The Final Rule is limitless. It purports to regulate any piece of metal or plastic that has been machined beyond its primordial state for fear that it might one day be turned into a gun, a gun frame, or a gun receiver. And it doesn’t stop regulating the metal or plastic until it’s melted back down to ooze. The GCA allows none of this. I concur in the majority’s opinion holding the Final Rule is unlawful. And I further concur that the matter should be remanded to the district court to fashion an appropriate remedy for the plaintiffs.
Andrew S. Oldham
U.S. Circuit Judge
VanDerStok v. Garland
November 9, 2023
You might want to read the whole thing. It is pretty amusing to see the ATF get slapped down so hard.
There is a joke about buying an 80% receiver for a Sten at Home Depot.
And the ATF will care about this much:
><. Until they as an agency face real consequences (e.g. getting shut down) there is no reason for them to. They still get paid, get their pensions, etc. Authority without responsibility.
“Where an executive agency engages in what is, for all
intents and purposes, ‘law-making,’ the legislature is deprived of its
primary function under our Constitution, and our citizens are robbed of their
right to fair representation in government.”
A frontal stab into the thorax of Chevron deference.
Well Joe, I’d like to thank you, and all those like you that bring us such high humor. Little in this world feels better than a bunch of communists being ground to powder under the weigh of their own ignorance.
Sorry it cost so much. You’all can’t be thanked enough!
My goodness, the arrogance of the ATF:
ATF explicitly disclaimed the need to explain how any of these factors would balance in practice: “It is not the purpose of the rule to provide guidance so that persons may structure transactions to avoid the requirements of the law.”
Yes. The people responsible for coming up with such an idea and the language used should be charged with entrapment, as that is clearly their goal. “Let’s have a vague law, and never explain it so people can’t be sure if they are complying with it!”
Almost worse than Soviet Article 57, where “counter-revolutionary” could be applied to anyone for almost anything that the state deemed problematic, directly or indirectly. https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/socialist-legality/socialist-legality-texts/first-soviet-criminal-code/
As I’ve done on Remembrance Day (Veteran’s Day) over the last few years, I’m watching They Shall Not Grow Old (available on Amazon Prime to purchase, or watch on Netflix, or just buy the Blu-ray as I did).
I’d like to think that really appreciating that reality of that film, using restored film from the actual war and recorded statements of the Tommies collected by the Imperial War Museum, would tamp down the enthusiasm for a civil war in America. That said, perhaps it would do to subdue the possibility of such a war by the realization that the horror of that kind of war would be gladly faced rather than endure a worse peace.
Tellingly, the comments are turned off for the article. Now, I wonder why that might be…?
This is a start, but…..
Until our Elected Representatives – the Constitution specifies that all fiscal legislation must originate in the House of Representatives and be approved by same to proceed – feel enough “hot breath of the voters” on their necks to reduce the BATFE budget to zero, save the expense necessary for bulldozing the building and planting grass, crap like this will continue to be propagated requiring repeated defeat at our expense.
It becomes simply “no budget we pass will contain any funding for BATFE; it that requires not passing a budget at all, so be it.”
There may be a very few worthwhile activities BATFE performs, most centering around proper payment of taxes on alcohol and tobacco (whether those are appropriate for a federal government to preform is a separate issue).
The First Amendment stipulates the Constitutionally-enumerated rights to freedom of speech, religion and by extension, the press; there is no federal government agency charged with the responsibility of regulating the length and content of church sermons, how many pages a Bible may contain, or how many words, of what kind, may be used in the printing of newspaper stories, nor would the creation of such an agency be tolerated (I might be wrong on that – it seems there is widespread tolerance of restrictive government action among the general populace these days, primarily because our Education Industrial Complex has so corrupted and misrepresented the concepts of “freedom,” “liberty,” and “personal responsibility.”).
So why is there a federal government agency that is charged with regulating the enumerated right of firearms ownership and posession?
How many armored divisions does the Circuit Court command?
That’s exactly how much the ruling Junta cares about its opinions.