By John Crump
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the new proposed rule on unfinished frames and receivers was developed due to “numerous requests from licensees seeking clarity on how [Privately Manufactured Firearms] may be accepted and recorded.” But a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Gun Owners of America (GOA) shows that reasoning to be false.
This is the justification the agency used for proposing new rules regulating 80% unfinished lowers, frames and “ghost guns.”
The ATF claimed that numerous federal firearms licensees (FFL) contacted the Bureau and asked how to handle privately manufactured firearms (PMF) they take into inventory. The word “numerous” can mean many things to different people. Some might consider numerous to be three or more. To others, it starts at a much bigger number, say 300 or so. What can be agreed on by most people is that the number is greater than one.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines numerous as: “consisting of great numbers of units or individuals.”
GOA wanted to see what the ATF considered “numerous requests,” so the gun-rights group filed a FOIA request with the government agency. The ATF answered the request by providing the requested documents to GOA’s lawyers.
The response shows that the ATF received one request from a single FFL sent to one Industry Operations Inspectors (IOI), about one PMF (privately manufactured firearm) in August of 2020. The ATF could not produce any other request from FFLs about PMFs!?
Read the rest of this post at Ammoland . . .
This article originally appeared at Ammoland and is reprinted here with permission.
