B. Todd Jones is the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives [And Really Big Fires]. In this PBS interview, Byron talks about implementing a new “business model” for the ATF—a worrying bit of jargon for a Marine who never spent a day of his life running a business. Jones promises to focus his Agency on “the trigger-pullers and traffickers around the country who are creating havoc in our community.” Trigger-pullers? Not criminals? Another trendy but concerning choice of words. Byron then redefines criminal violence as . . .
“slow-motion mass shootings.” Oh dear. That’s the term gun control advocates use to agitate for civilian disarmament. I wonder who’s Byron hanging out with these days? Or maybe he’s just in synch with those who would deny Americans their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.
After kvetching about a lack of agents (again), Byron says he’s determined to tackle the “five percent of gun dealers” who “continue to dump firearms into that illegal crime gun pool.” Wait. Didn’t the ATF do just that in Operation Fast and Furious?
The Director’s confident that things are better now, organizationally speaking. Could the ATF do a sequel, F&F II accidentally on purpose? “I learned to never say never,” Byron demurs. In other words, Byron didn’t promise bad shit won’t happen again. Which is the most truthful thing—and prophetic—thing he said in the whole interview.
My bet is the letters where sent to the High Rollers districts in NYC and nothing will come of it. They would not send these into the boroughs that have the higher crime counts.
“Bet”? “High rollers”? You have a gambling problem, friend? You DO have a gambling problem: you have gambled that they don’t REALLY want to confiscate all the guns, and, like a person with a gambling problem, you look for reasons to believe the Universe is looking for a way to make things go your way.
It is not. It is entirely neutral in nature, it doesn’t get involved, and you will lose your bets again. THEY REALLY DO intend to get all the guns – if they can find a way to do it.
I wonder how many of these will end up in a forcible attempt of violating the 2nd amendment? And of those, how many is any one willing to bet that the owners give them the rounds in their mags first?
In NYC – probably most if not all owners will peacefully comply (except for the criminals who never registered guns in the first place). Don’t expect to see a Ruby Ridge kind of standoff on TV any time soon. Now, if they start trying to pull this sort of shenanigan upstate, well, then things might get a bit ugly
IDK, I think I’d like the PKM better. 54R is a bit cheaper by the case.
5% of BATFE agents are law abiding
No one’s going to shoot anyone over this. They’re going to give up their guns, have them modified (if possible), or ship them out of the state.
This is why you shouldn’t move to a state or locality that registers firearms. If you live in a free state and it turns into a hellish nightmare like this with registration, move or just don’t register them.
Fast and Furious only got to 5% of gun dealers
I think the bigger question is: “Why wouldn’t you?”
If all of the artificial scarcity was dismantled and they cost what they should, I’d buy at least one per year.
This entry will be hard to beat.
Very good story, and what a fine and loving grandfather.
Like I have said the Col needs cashiered from the USA and given a Red Coat.
He is a traitor to his oath, Country, and The people.
They love to bring up that statistic about how most guns used in crimes can be traced back to 5% of dealers. They like to throw that out there without context, so that those dealers can be libeled as criminals in a non-actionable way.
The thing is this: the ATF can audit any one of those 5% of dealers, and yank their license or even put them in prison if they find anything amiss with their paperwork. They already HAVE the crime guns they traced back, they already HAVE access to the 4473 forms and bound book that document how those guns were sold. So why are these 5% still in business? It can only be because the ATF can find no evidence of wrongdoing, and the most plausible explanation for that is that they’ve done nothing wrong.
Most guns used in crimes come from a small fraction of dealers because that’s the fraction of dealers located within easy distance of low-income, high-crime urban areas. That’s where innocent people living in high-crime areas go to get their defensive weapons, and those people are the same ones whose guns are most likely to get stolen by those very same criminals. Those dealers are also the place where the criminals living in those neighborhoods send their straw buyers. None of that is the dealers’ fault.
Is Mr. Jones willing to guess what % of straw purchasers for urban gangs are black or Latino? Or is he only willing to make pointless generalizations against legitimate businessmen? It boggles my mind that a black man in this country can use that kind of non-logic when it has been used against his own people.
Yeah sounds fun but I think I’ll pass on lighting off .358 Win in a “pistol”
Although the intermediate calibre rifles and SBRs may have had an effect, I’m thinking heavy hunting revolvers like the .454 and .500S&W probably killed these single shot hunting pistol monstrosities.
Bet this Lt Colonel Robert Bateman was a POG, a pencil pusher who was never on the front lines of a battlefield. Someone I would love to meet in a dark alley
I hope a few of these gun owners have the stones to challenge this via SCOTUS, and that SCOTUS still has the ability to vote pro-2A. If this cannot win via a legitimate court challenge, then peaceful resolutions may no longer be an option in the future. Perhaps a courageous war vet with an otherwise clean record could tell the NYPD to pound sand and not bastardized his fine old firearms to satisfy the political whim of a tyrant.
I didn’t like the cocking mechanism, so I stuck with the Thompson contender.
The other day on the Bill Bennett radio show, ATF agent John Dodson of F&F whistleblower fame was interviewed as his book came out. I figured that I had heard everything. As he went deeper in the interview it became obvious to me that we ain’t heard NOTHING yet. He detailed how the FBI was paying the cartels to buy guns. How the DEA was running their guys who worked in these cartels. How NOBODY told the Mexicans about this. How the ATF was essentially protecting the gun runners right up to the border. How they browbeat the FFLs into selling the guns against their will. Then he was asked the WHO question? Who knew? How high up? The answer….the White House knew. If you can get the podcast of the interview it is well worth the listen.
The next day I listened to the Congressional hearing on this Administration and its illegal circumvention of the law. I nearly wanted to puke. Here is an article on Prof Jonathan Turley testifying:
http://clashdaily.com/2013/12/preach-prof-obamas-become-danger-constitution-designed-avoid/
The criminals are those in power, Those who have titles. Those who collect our money in salary. Those to whom we are supposed to regard with respect.
ST:
Bravo. You have condensed all my arguments about the training and preparedness industry into one excellent coherent piece.
I would add one more thing. The wrong kind of training could actually leave the person less capable of successfully completing his “mission” than having no training at all. All that a citizen wants if he gets into a DGU situation is to walk away without getting killed or wounded, not killing someone or ending up as the next George Zimmerman. If you are trained to respond like a cop or authorized private security guard you may indeed take out the bad guy(s) but in the process go well beyond the legal limits imposed on self defense and end up spending the next ten year years in the slammer.
Nothing amuses me more than reading about DGU tactics for a situation that sounds like a rogue CIA extraction team shows up at your house by mistake. Guess what? if that or the equilvalent tactical situation actually happens you are going down regardless of how well trained you think you are.
As always my empahsis is on identifying the bad guy before he identifies you or avoiding/detering him if he has. As they say at “the Farm,” as well as other places you win 100% of the gunfights you don’t get into.
Give this guy the FNS-40 already. This is the best article. And while we’re at it, can we all agree to never say the word ‘operator’ again?
Alright Jay, I will now refer to you as a fork lift “specialist.”
Exactly…that’s why I’ve recently started offering a class on carry for the everyman. Nothing on assaulting a bunker in Afghanistan, but realistic stuff like going to the movies and wally world. And a lot of emphasis on avoidance.
Very good article. There is a bit of elitism going through the carry community that looks down on guys who carry wheel guns or 1911s or something like that. Its the will to win which wins the battle. One of books that shows just that is the book “A Rifleman went to War”. Talks about the pistols available to them in WWI. One guy won a close quarters one on one fight in a foxhole, not because he was a faster draw but because he was faster with using his gun on his belt as a mace instead of a gun. The german never had a chance.
While I understand the spirit of this article, he bundles two issues into one.
1. That you don’t need to be able to run a semi auto pistol 1 handed to defend yourself (and other over the top skills)
2. You don’t need a combat styled handgun.
I won’t argue with 1, but 2 I do take some issue with. No you don’t need necessarily a plastic fantastic for defense, but it doesn’t hurt anything either. Using police statistics, the NY police department hits less than 20% of the time. What if there is more than one dude? With a 7 round magazine + 1 you can knock off 2 guys playing to the law of averages, maybe. With 15+1 rounds, you can potentially handle 3 dudes as long as you shoot as poorly as an officer who does not take firearms training seriously. I recognize the likelihood of there being multiple attackers is low, but the likelihood of my house burning down is pretty low too, but I still have homeowners insurance. I recognize this can lead to an arms race sort of mentality that stops at nothing short of an AR with a 100 rd drum, but 3 is the number I arrived at and wanted to be prepared for based on living in the city for a time.
Long story short, I don’t feel great leaving the house with less than 15 rounds of ammo in a gun I can get 3 fingers on the grip for. Wearing a Walther in a holster is as inconvenient as wearing a Glock 19 in a holster. Going to my LCP, I’m confident I can fight at bad breath distances if I have to but my MO will be retreat as long shots are tough and the cartridge just ain’t that great.
I would love to have a full auto 22lr – current issues with actually finding 22lr aside. However, I’ve done exactly zero research on the subject, does anyone even make a full auto 22?
Excellent article. I always get a good chuckle when I see guys training at the range in full tactical rigs. Sure, they wear those around town all the time…
I wear to the range the same equipment I wear around town…namely, whatever holster I feel like using at the moment and a spare mag in my pocket. Now let’s get good with this shit, because it’s what I’m going to have on me if I ever have to deploy this stuff.
Knock knock. Oink oink. Bang bang.