California Senator Diane Feinstein — yet another wealthy, old octogenarian elitist — has published a letter addressed to Joe Biden giving him what she thinks should be the requirements for his pick to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Needless to say, she wants somebody who is wiling to enforce any and all gun control orders that get rammed through Congress or that Sleepy Joe signs into law by executive order.
Her press release started by calling for a permanent director, pointing out that the agency hasn’t had one since 2015. After all, there is so much gun control WORK to do!
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) joined Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and a group of their colleagues to send a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to quickly nominate a permanent Director to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). In their letter, the senators highlight a number of priorities that the new ATF Director must work to immediately address, including public transparency, information-sharing practices, oversight of the gun industry, the proliferation of ghost guns, and dealer licenses and background checks.
Feinstein’s Vision Of The ATF
The full text of the letter can be viewed here and below, but we’ll summarize her points for our readers.
- The new director must be willing to enforce a ban on all ‘ghost guns’ and ‘maker kit’ guns. That won’t be hard for ATF agents to swallow, since they were already willing to do that last fall!
- The new director must “strengthen the regulation and clarify the number of private sales an individual can make before the seller is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.” Five guns? Twenty? Who knows! This law will be made by the fine bureaucrats at the ATF! If you thought only the legislature could make new gun laws…well, Diane Feinstein doesn’t think so!
- “The federal government must create the standards for regulating the gun industry.” She goes on to say that in addition to new standards, they must also “take steps to crackdown on bad apple gun dealers such as revoking licenses from dealers that consistently break federal laws, revising its internal standards for taking action against negligent Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs), strengthening the application process to obtain or renew an FFL, and increasing record keeping requirements.” (Emphasis by S.A.D.) They want to triple the paperwork? They can do that! They want to make it even more difficult to get an FFL? They can do that! They can triple the fees to get an FFL? They can do that!
- Keep better data and report on it regularly. Now, this wouldn’t be the end of the world if the data wasn’t twisted and manipulated into leftist, anti-gun propaganda that has the government’s stamp of approval on it.
- “Update critical reports and develop new ways to affirmatively share information about gun trafficking and the source of crime guns.” Are they…uh…sure they want to do that? Because the last time the average American can remember them reporting on that…it was pretty embarrassing!
- “Require FFLs to notify the Department of Justice every time they complete a gun sale where a background check has been initiated but not completed to ensure the prioritization of completing background checks where a sale has been made.” This one made every gun owner who bought a gun in 2021 laugh out loud.
As we reported, last year there were over 21 million guns sold in America. Of those, eight million were to first time gun buyers.
And at times, the folks waiting for NICS checks waited longer than three days for their background check to come back and thus were allowed to purchase their guns without waiting for the delayed background check to come through.
So the incompetence and failure of the government’s background check system isn’t the problem — it’s those darn gun buyers! Instead of admitting that the NICS check is broken, Feinstein wants to pretend that those were all sneaky bad guys who bought a gun illegally!
Laughable.
Not So Fast
Feinstein finished her letter with the following quote:
Our nation’s gun violence epidemic has struck our schools, churches, families, and communities. We need a strong leader at the ATF who understands the extent of our nation’s gun violence epidemic, is committed to ensuring that dangerous individuals don’t gain access to firearms, and will take steps to combat the rise in gun violence in our country. Our nation cannot wait to take action, and we urge you to quickly nominate an ATF Director who will attack this crisis head on.
A ‘strong leader’ apparently means somebody willing to enforce more federal gun control no matter how draconian or unconstitutional!
And these scare phrases like “our nation cannot wait to take action” looks like code for “Enforce new laws even if they come from Biden’s pen instead of Congress!
SAPA To The Rescue
We’ve written a lot about SAPA legislation in the last few weeks because it would solve the problem of an out of control ATF perfectly!
SAPA legislation is simple. It essentially makes an entire state a ‘Second Amendment Sanctuary’ by nullifying federal gun control laws.
by requiring state law enforcement officers and state officials to only enforce state laws regarding firearms, ammo, and accessories — and only if that state law complies with the Second Amendment.
That means that if Joe Biden and his radical Democrat legislature pass a federal law requiring the confiscation of the AR-15 and all magazines that hold over ten rounds of ammunition, that state’s city, county and state authorities would be required to ignore it.
If it sounds too good to be true, it’s not. Missouri, Wyoming, Minnesota and other states have already filed this legisaltion!
They are leading the way in this fight — and we think dozens of red states are going to follow suit!
Text Of The Letter
The next Director of the ATF must be committed to enacting policies that will allow the agency to fulfill its mission to protect communities and combat gun violence. We need someone with experience in firearms and domestic terrorism who is prepared to take decisive action at the ATF. We urge you to nominate a director who will:
1. Implement regulations to stop the proliferation of ghost guns.
The ATF has wrongly determined that critical federal and state gun safety laws, such as background checks, do not apply to “unfinished” frames or receivers that can be easily converted into functioning firearms. Ghost guns are untraceable firearms constructed by individuals using unfinished gun components and are often sold as easy-to-assemble kits that are completely unregulated. ATF estimates that approximately 10,000 ghost guns were recovered by lfeaw enforcement in 2019. Likewise, in Washington, D.C., three ghost guns were recovered by police in 2017, 116 in 2019, and by December 17, 2020, over 280.
In 2019, a 16-year-old student at Saugus High School used a .45-caliber handgun that was assembled from unfinished gun parts to shoot five of his classmates, killing a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old-girl. The ATF should clarify the definition of a firearm to include any frame or receiver that is designed to be part of a functioning firearm, or could easily be turned into one;
2. Issue a new regulation clarifying which gun sellers must get dealer licenses and run background checks.
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act requires anyone “engaged in the business” of selling guns to obtain a federal license. The current regulation defining this term is vague and has allowed private individuals to illegally sell dozens, or even hundreds, of firearms without life-saving Brady background checks or oversight.
For example, in 2018, Thomas Caldwell, an unlicensed gun dealer in Wisconsin, sold a handgun to a four-time felon that was used to kill Cmdr. Paul Bauer, a police officer in Chicago. From 2015 to 2018, Mr. Caldwell had posted 202 ads for gun sales. In Odessa, Texas, a gunman, prohibited from purchasing firearms, used weapons he bought from an unlicensed firearms dealer to kill seven people and wound 25 others. The ATF must strengthen the regulation and clarify the number of private sales an individual can make before the seller is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms;
3. Modernize, strengthen, and prioritize oversight of the gun industry.
Tens of thousands of guns are trafficked into cities and into the hands of criminals every year. These guns can enter the illegal market through a variety of channels. The federal government must create the standards for regulating the gun industry. According to the most recently available data, a small percentage of gun dealers are responsible for the overwhelming majority of recovered crime guns, yet the ATF frequently allows these businesses to continue transferring firearms to the public without repercussion. The ATF must take steps to crackdown on bad apple gun dealers such as revoking licenses from dealers that consistently break federal laws, revising its internal standards for taking action against negligent Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs), strengthening the application process to obtain or renew an FFL, and increasing record keeping requirements.
Moreover, the ATF’s compliance inspection system for the gun industry must be reformed. The ATF only inspects an average of 7 percent of FFLs per year (including only 12-13 percent of gun dealers, pawnshops, and manufacturers), and rarely takes serious action against those FFLs who have consistently and seriously violated federal firearms laws while transferring guns;
4. Ensure public transparency by disseminating robust statistical data.
Since 2003, the ATF has cited a narrow interpretation of federal appropriations riders, known as the Tiahrt Amendments, as a restriction on its ability to share data on crime guns. The ATF must clarify that the appropriations riders do not restrict the Agency’s ability to publish or release aggregate data on crime guns and gun trafficking;
5. Update critical reports and develop new ways to affirmatively share information about gun trafficking and the source of crime guns.
The ATF annually publishes its Firearms Commerce in the United States report, however, since the 2001/2002 edition this report has only provided information on the firearms industry and ATF’s regulatory role. Previously this report included detailed aggregate data about how firearms are diverted from FFLs to the illegal market, information that is invaluable to researchers and lawmakers. Additionally, the ATF has not updated its gun trafficking report, Following the Gun: Enforcing Federal Laws Against Firearms Traffickers, since 2000. This report reviewed the agency’s trafficking investigations and their dispositions by prosecutors and courts. This report should be reissued annually and updated to include aggregate data on ghost guns; and
6. Require FFLs to notify the Department of Justice every time they complete a gun sale where a background check has been initiated but not completed to ensure the prioritization of completing background checks where a sale has been made.
Ensuring that federally prohibited individuals are not armed must be a top priority for law enforcement. While most background checks are completed instantly, approximately ten percent of checks require additional time to complete and three percent are delayed more than three business days. From January to October 2020, there were over 450,000 checks that weren’t completed within three days, and it’s possible that the total number for all of 2020 may be closer to 600,000. However, federal law allows these sales to proceed after three business days without the completion of a background check, allowing some individuals that are prohibited from purchasing a firearm to obtain a weapon. This loophole, called the “default proceed,” and now known as the Charleston Loophole allowed an avowed white supremacist prohibited from owning a gun to purchase a firearm and kill nine Black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Our nation’s gun violence epidemic has struck our schools, churches, families, and communities. We need a strong leader at the ATF who understands the extent of our nation’s gun violence epidemic, is committed to ensuring that dangerous individuals don’t gain access to firearms, and will take steps to combat the rise in gun violence in our country. Our nation cannot wait to take action, and we urge you to quickly nominate an ATF Director who will attack this crisis head on.