Tag: #ATFE

Young Adults and the Second Amendment 

A recent decision from United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Reese vs ATF ruled the laws restricting 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds from purchasing a handgun (18 U.S.C. §§ 922(b)(1) and (c)(1)) from a Federal Firearm Licensee (FFL) to be unconstitutional. The case was remanded back to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

The ruling itself may be found at: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25509805-reese-v-atf-opinion/#document/p1

The core of the issue becomes when you consider someone an adult. Naturally, there’s a political slant to all of this. 

For most of the country, a person becomes an adult at age 18. With a few exceptions where parental consent is given, 18 is the age where you can vote, get married, enter legal contracts, join or be drafted into the military and be punished as an adult for crimes vs the juvenile justice system. Most in this age group are graduating high school and either going to college or entering the workforce and living on their own. Pretty straight forward adult type stuff. 

Yet somehow, the gun control community believes the Second Amendment should not apply to young adults ages 18 through 20. They say you must be a full 21 years of age before the full protections of the Second Amendment apply to you. 

BUT the very same people supporting this also believe: 

An 18-year-old is mature enough to join the military and be issued and use handguns, fully automatic rifles, bazookas, mortars, artillery, tanks… you get the idea. 
A 16-year-old is mature enough to vote and should be voting in local, state and national elections. 
A child of single digit age is mature enough to determine their own sex/gender and obtain medical and surgical intervention without their parent’s knowledge or consent yet still have to be told to eat their vegetables, do their homework and chores and have a bedtime set by their parents. 

One of the great lying with statistics examples is how the gun control community now says the leading cause of death in children is so-called “gun violence’. Is it true? ABSOLUTELY NOT! How did they come to this conclusion? Easy, by including ADULTS aged 18 & 19 in their counts. When you eliminate the 18- and 19-year-olds, you get what it has been for decades, traffic accidents. 

Yet this lie is so pervasive and has been repeated so many times by so many left leaning ‘news’ groups, activists and politicians, it’s almost become a fact. And that’s the rationale behind doing it. If you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes fact. 

According to the latest census data, this age group represents only 3.91% of the United States population. As a political force, they have minimal clout and practically zero representation. It’s very easy to choose this age group for discriminatory practices since they have neither the influence, nor resources to mount an effective challenge without the assistance of others.  

Besides, it’s not a right denied it’s just a right delayed until they are a bit older. And within just a few years, far shorter than most legal challenges through our court system these days. Note: Figure out where “A right delayed is a right denied” originates and the legal arguments it has been used in to see the hypocrisy of the use here. 

They argue the regulations do nothing to prohibit 18- 19- and 20-year-olds from owning, possessing, or carrying handguns, nor does it prohibit them from buying handguns in the unlicensed, private market or receiving handguns as gifts. This of course assumes universal background check laws are not in place, a parent is willing to provide a handgun, and the state allows them to carry a handgun.  


In this case, the government argued that a limited ban on the purchase of handguns from FFLs is not an infringement on the Second Amendment rights, and in any event this age groups is not among “the people” protected by the right. 

While founding era 18 to 20-year-old could not serve on jury, or vote, but there are no historical precedents for age restrictions for the Second Amendment. 

Let’s also keep in mind in 1870, nearly eighty years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the Fifteenth Amendment extended voting rights to all Americans, regardless of race; and it was not until 1920 that the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote. Finally, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment lowered the voting age for all Americans from twenty-one to eighteen in 1971.  

The good news is there are organizations who are willing to represent and challenge these age discrimination laws. Challenges are being mounted in multiple states against laws which deny this age group the ability to purchase a handgun, any long gun, ammunition or obtain a concealed carry permit. 

This ruling is a long time coming but will no doubt be challenged up to the United States Supreme Court, as it should be.  This discriminatory law against young adults has no place in our country and needs to be jettisoned along with the rest of the do-nothing to increase public safety gun control laws that have been passed. 

Young adults deserve to be able to protect themselves and their families at home and in public just the same as any other adult. 

Bob

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Protecting Second Amendment Rights Executive Order

On Friday, February 7th, the President of the United States issued an executive order entitled Protecting Second Amendment Rights. Given the all-out assault on the Second Amendment by the previous administration, this is a significant event, but will the result be what we want? 

This is the link to the Executive Order on the White House website. I encourage you to take a few minutes and read it for yourself. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/protecting-second-amendment-rights-7b90/

As expected, the reaction from the extreme left anti-gun zealots and their talking heads was swift and unhinged. 

From Everytown: BREAKING: Trump just signed a sweeping executive order calling on

Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate “ongoing infringements” of the Second Amendment. Let’s be clear: The bipartisan, life-saving, and extremely popular progress on gun safety made under the leadership of the Biden Administration is consistent with the Second Amendment, which is why 15 Senate Republicans supported the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

From Giffords:  “Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and teens in America—we cannot make it easier for guns to fall into dangerous hands. The president’s priority should be to build on the lifesaving progress made over the last four years, not boost profits for gun company CEOs.” “The Second Amendment isn’t under attack. GIFFORDS built a coalition of thousands of gun owners who, like me, know that there is no conflict between the Second Amendment and commonsense gun safety. Any effort to repeal important, lifesaving measures will harm public safety and put our children at risk. The safety of our families, our children, our schools and our communities is not a partisan issue. That’s not what Americans voted for in November.”

For those of us in the real world, we know the previous administration did absolutely NOTHING life-saving, or to enhance public safety or protect children. In fact, all the measures taken were against law abiding firearm owners by limiting their ability to protect themselves and their families at home and in public. ALL these groups are complicit in the tragedies at schools by making them gun free zones that ensures they have ZERO on-site protection from law enforcement or armed security. And p.s., so-called “gun violence” is not the leading cause of death for children in America. That is a lie. But let’s not go there right now. 

What do we think is going to happen with this? 

First off, given the decisive actions taken from day one by this President, it’s safe to assume this will not be a typical government analyze and bury studies. We should reasonably expect the report in 30 days and for it to be relatively straight forward. 

The fact that the ATF is specifically called out gives us hope their overzealous and unconstitutional attempts to create new, restrictive gun control laws on bump stocks, frames and receivers, forced reset triggers, stabilizing braces and bans on imports and exports could be stopped. We can also hope the zero tolerance administrative actions towards FFL’s (Federal Firearm License) and extreme force raids for non-violent offenses could come to an end as well. 

BUT, we also must understand this Executive Action is directed to the new Attorney General of the Department of Justice (DOJ) who has a history of vigorously supporting so-called “Red Flag” laws, including advising the current President on them during his previous administration. 

Our hope comes from that we have already seen the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, a new federal job for gun control lobbyists inside the walls of the White House, disbanded. 

This Executive Order is significant, especially after previous administrations have done everything in their power to restrict the rights of law-abiding firearm owners and users while doing nothing to prevent or punish those who blatantly violate the laws we already have with impunity. 

We should also not take this as a time to let up on our legal and legislative efforts, especially at the state level. With both chambers of Congress being a near 50/50 split, any significant federal laws having anything to do with Second Amendment protected rights are going to be damn near impossible to push through. 

So, let’s keep our fingers crossed we get the results we want from this Executive Order, and  we can translate this success down to our own states. 

Bob

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Reform or Abolish the ATF? 

With the incoming administration selecting a new cabinet and the directors of key government agencies, many of us are anxiously awaiting word of who will take the reins of the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives). While the Second Amendment community is generally in agreement there needs to be great deal of reform in the agency, some are calling for it to be outright abolished. 

Of the areas the ATF is responsible for, firearms are by far the most visible and controversial. In fact, I don’t think any of us could name a recent action by the ATF where alcohol, tobacco or explosives was the subject. Firearms is also the only one of the ATF areas protected by the Second Amendment. 

Certainly, the ATF has had many infamous incidents over the years. Ruby Ridge, Waco, and most recently the shooting of a Little Rock, AR airport director in his home during a pre-dawn raid. While none of the incidents resulted in the ATF or their personnel being found at fault, their decisions to use deadly force when myriad other options were available in all these cases have created calls for the ATF to be disbanded. 

The mass collection of inventory and sales records from FFLs around the country by taking copies and photos of their A&D (acquisition and disposition) books, unrelated to investigations or audits, combined with their own admission of creating a database, albeit with alleged “limited” search capabilities, in violation of federal law, has only intensified these calls. 

ATF has also been targeting FFLs with their new Zero Tolerance Policy where even minor, paperwork errors are considered “willful violations” and falsification of records, resulting in mandatory revocations of licenses. This has increased to now at least triple of historical revocations. The result is what the left-wing extremists have been trying to achieve for decades, a steadily decreasing number of retail firearms establishments. 

Adding fuel to the fire has been their use of their own administrative reinterpretations of the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 to create new legal restrictions, without the authority of Congress.  

Bump stocks are an excellent example of the issues within ATF. Unregulated for years even after numerous ATF evaluations, they were shoehorned into the NFA as a “machine gun” and outlawed. Owners were given a short grace period to turn them in. It took a United States Supreme Court decision in June 2024 to strike down the erroneous definition and administrative rule.  Even with this decision, the ATF website still has the invalid Final Rule, How to Destroy, Small Entity Compliance Guide and Bump Stock Q&As with the outdated information, along with a short section on the Supreme Court ruling against it.

A fresh “Abolish the ATF” bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives, the previous one receiving no action. Yet even with a razor thin republican majority in the House and Senate, and a republican President, there is very little chance of this visibility bill ever seeing the light of day given the establishment entrenched RINO members. 

Still, the abolish the ATF supporters are calling for the incoming President to administratively do away with the agency and divide their current responsibilities amongst other federal agencies and the states. Given the past abuses of constitutional rights, federal law and their own rules and regulations, call for abolishing the ATF are well founded. The issue beyond that decision comes from where the essential functions should go. 

The most logical destination would be the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) as it has the depth and investigative and administrative knowledge to handle the ATF’s current responsibilities. They already handle the background checks for FFL’s (Federal Firearms Licensees) through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). 

But as soon as you say FBI, you have to face the reality that the nation’s former premier law enforcement agency has become an anti-rights, anti-constitution, anti-freedom, anti-firearm, partisan haven whose motivation and investigations have made it the de facto hired muscle of left wing extremists. The FBI itself is facing calls for massive reform, reorganization and purging. Therefore, adding additional regulatory and enforcement responsibilities for a constitutionally protected right to an agency which has showed a clear distain for American rights would be a disaster. 

Then again, any federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Justice would be just as disastrous given the DOJ’s partisan and selective targeting of anyone inside or outside the government who doesn’t think the way DOJ does. 

While the President-elect has nominated strong and committed replacements as leaders of the DOJ and FBI, the establishment regulars are already rallying their forces to oppose them at every turn. 

Pushing some of the responsibilities down to the states would also be a trainwreck. Anyone who has had to deal with the California Department of Justice, Bureau of Firearms (CA DOJ BOF), the state of Kalifornistan’s own state level version of the ATF (because the ATF doesn’t do what they need them to do) knows what a nightmare of bureaucratic nonsense they are. Every fringe level gun control concept they can dream up comes to life here and is administered with unwavering severity. 

While several deep blue states have similar state level departments, imagine if every blue leaning state had their own mini-ATF to regulate firearms within their borders. Aside from a bizarre patchwork of conflicting laws from state-to-state, firearm sales and use would become a privilege based on your state of residence instead of a constitutionally protected right. 

I would favor a reform approach, although that may be due to folks from my generation preferring to fix broken things instead of throwing them out. However, I fully acknowledge it will be a long, difficult struggle. The ATF didn’t get to the condition it is in today overnight, and it will certainly not be reformed overnight either. Even with strong leadership and executive support from the White House, it could take decades to realign the agency back into working with the firearms industry and the public on safety and regulations, instead of trying to crush and eliminate it. 

Despite the best efforts of the left-wing anti-gun extremists, the Second Amendment, firearms, ammunition and the will to bear arms are not going away. Millions and millions MORE Americans are choosing firearms to protect their families inside and outside of their homes every year. Having an ATF administration that understands this and will refocus the agencies efforts on those who are actually doing harm should be the goal going forward. 

Bob

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