Yesterday, John Crump published a report at Ammoland.com regarding a recent conference call between the ATF’s top brass and the “Biden transition team.” To be clear, no matter what you may read in the media, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is not yet the president-elect. At least not yet. None of the 50 states have certified their election results and the electoral college isn’t due to vote until December 14.
That made the conference call in question both premature and inappropriate. We’ve talked to people with direct knowledge of what was discussed on the call and can confirm Crump’s report that the higher ups at the ATF told the Biden boys they want to target two items should their boss occupy the oval office in January. Number one on the hit list is pistol arm braces and number two is 80% lowers.
The people we’ve spoken to confirm that the push to ban these items is coming from the top two seats at the ATF — acting Director Regina Lombardo and Associate Deputy Marvin Richardson. Also on board with banning these items are three members of the bureau’s general counsel’s office — Chief Counsel Joel Roessner, Deputy Chief Counsel Pamela Hicks and Associate Chief Counsel James Vann.
Both of these items have, of course been legal for manufacture and sale to the public for years. The ATF itself approved the sale of pistol arm braces eight years ago. Since then, millions have been sold and hundreds of people in the industry have jobs that are based on the manufacture and sale of braces.
As for 80% lowers, it’s always been legal for Americans to build their own firearms for their own use. Only a couple of state require serialization and registration of home-built guns now.
An 80% lower is a partially-finished block of aluminum. The buyer is then required to drill and mill the lower to make it functional for use as part of a pistol or rifle. If 80% lowers are banned, would 75% lowers still be legal? How about 70%? Will we have to regulate the sale of all billet aluminum in the country in case someone decides to use it to fashion a gun?
To ban these items, the ATF would have to reverse itself, doing a 180 on scores of opinions and rulings it has been issuing regarding these items for years. Of course, that didn’t stop them when they were ordered by the Trump White House to regulate bump stocks the same way as they do machine guns.
What such a ban would look like is anyone’s guess at this point. They could ban only new sales of the items, letting current owners keep and use them. Or, they could ban their possession, as was done with bump stocks, requiring owners to turn them in or destroy them.
Either way, if Biden is inaugurated and orders the ATF to ban these items, it will touch off a new round of lawsuits from gun rights orgs and owners of the newly-verboten equipment. Thousands of them will soon be sitting on lake beds all across the country.
In the mean time the White House apparently has the detail of what was discussed between the ATF brass and the Bidenbots. The President would be well within his rights to clean house at the ATF, just as he’s recently done at the DOD.
That, of course, would be a calculated risk. If the court challenges and recounts go his way, he’d be able to install replacements that have more respect for the rule of law, not to mention the right to keep and bear arms. But if things don’t go his way and Biden takes office in January, the replacements could well be worse than the asses that are currently in those seats.
It’s a great time to be alive.