USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- The “leadership” of the National Rifle Association, are either thoroughly corrupt, delusional, or both. They held their Annual Meeting of Members on October 2nd, 2021, of this year, and the event was described by the new President of the Board of Directors, Charles Cotton as follows:

“The proceedings in Charlotte were an amazing celebration of NRA fellowship and freedom. Under the direction of Wayne LaPierre, the NRA is strong and secure – well-positioned to chart its course for the future.”

An “amazing celebration of NRA fellowship…”?

Cotton and LaPierre conspired to keep the meeting as sparsely attended as possible, moving the scheduled meeting from Houston to Charlotte, then not promoting it at all, and finally, setting up a ticketing service that reported the event as “sold out” almost as soon as the “tickets” were made available. Nothing about the meeting ever appeared in any of the NRA’s magazines, but they did, in a minimal nod toward technical compliance with New York law, publish two or three small notices in a local Fairfax, Virginia weekly newspaper. Information was belatedly added to the official website, in such a way as to be hard to find, then a few emails were sent out, but apparently only to relatively new Annual Members, who would be the least likely to be concerned about all of the accusations of financial chicanery in the Association, and who can’t even vote on most matters at a meeting.

In the end, the meeting room was only set up for between about 400 and 500 people, but counts by multiple attendees came in at between 120 and 140 people. That’s barely enough to comprise the 100-member quorum needed for a legal meeting. And almost half of those attendees were NRA Directors, many of whom were accompanied by their spouses, easily accounting for close to two-thirds of all attendees. Directors also got advance notice of the meeting and registration requirements, along with encouragement to bring friends and supporters.

With all of that, it was not at all surprising when a complex resolution from the floor by Director candidate Frank Tait, calling for a vote of “no confidence” against Wayne La’Pierre and others, and calling for their resignations, was blocked by a parliamentary move by Director Joel Friedman of California, with the support of 75% of the members present.

The meeting was an opportunity for NRA officers to pat themselves on the back and loudly proclaim that all is well, while the Association crashes down around them.

“Under the direction of Wayne LaPierre, the NRA is strong and secure – well-positioned to chart its course for the future.”

Seriously, what’s this guy smoking? Revenues are down dramatically. Membership is down dramatically. Influence on the Hill has all but disappeared. The headquarters building is mortgaged to the hilt and reported to be suffering from serious structural problems, particularly with the roof, which is reportedly leaking so badly that ceilings on the top floors have collapsed, forcing some offices to be relocated. Even Lloyds of London has refused to extend their liability insurance coverage for officers and directors. And the trial phase of the New York Attorney General’s suit against the NRA and its top executives is scheduled to begin in just a few more months.

Looting the National Firearms Museum’s Collection, True or False?

On top of all of that, there are now serious concerns about the state of the National Firearms Museum’s collection, and much of the concern is coming from the long-time Senior Curator of that museum, Doug Wicklund. I raised these concerns with several NRA Directors a couple of months ago, but unfortunately, those Directors who haven’t completely blocked me are on the outs with the “leadership,” and thus were unable to get any additional information. That means that rumors and speculation about the Museum and its vast collection of rare and unusual – not to mention extremely valuable – firearms remain just rumors and speculation. The fact that the former Senior Curator has been blocked from even setting foot in the museum he helped to design and build, even for a farewell photo, has him concerned about what they might be afraid he’ll see – or won’t see – among the exhibits. His concerns lend significant gravity to the rumors and speculation.

There have also been rumors and anonymous reports of NRA Directors and other “insiders,” cherry-picking through firearms that are donated to the NRA, prior to Museum staff having access to them, and before they go out to auction for benefit of the Association.

Obviously, not every firearm donated to the Museum is worthy of being retained in the collection, and many are auctioned off as a regular course of business. This is always explained to donors prior to the consummation of any gift agreement. But the objective is always supposed to be to honor the wishes of the donor and raise funds for the Museum and the Association at large. If NRA insiders are able to acquire items at discount prices prior to auctions, the Museum and the NRA lose out.

With their “secret” meeting in Charlotte, and their overwhelming reelection of Wayne LaPierre and election of Charles Cotton President and David Coy 2nd Vice President, the Board has made it abundantly clear that they are fully committed to the current course, regardless of the desires of the members, or the laws that they’re supposed to operate under. Both Cotton and Coy testified in the failed bankruptcy trial, to their own failures and abuse of the Audit Committee. They both admitted that they’ve not bothered to hold Wayne LaPierre accountable for his multiple, self-confessed breaches of the Bylaws and policies of the NRA, and instructed the outside auditors to ignore LaPierre’s activities as well. These were the two “leaders” primarily responsible for making sure the NRA and its employees stayed on the straight and narrow, and they have confessed under oath to abdicating that responsibility, with no justification for that failure other than to say that they “trust Wayne.” And the response of the Board of Directors to this dereliction of duty was to elect them to the highest offices of the Board.

I now believe that the NRA is a lost cause. The “leadership” has effectively shut out dissenting voices, ignored valid, serious concerns, promoted corruption and incompetence, and stifled member participation. They’ve blown off documented and self-admitted breaches of NRA policies and basic business practices, as well as clearly criminal activities, yet they continue to claim that they are stronger, healthier, and moving in the right direction, like never before.

It’s a tragic farce and it’s all going to come crashing down very soon.

At some point in the very near future, NRA’s $2 million-a-month attorney, Bill Brewer, will decide that there’s no more money for him to suck out of the Association, so he’ll call a special meeting to inform the Executive Committee that the evidence compiled by the NY AG is too strong and overwhelming and that the Association’s best course will be to try and settle the case. He’ll convince them to pay their last pennies to the state of New York to try and keep their “leaders” out of jail, and maintain some shadowy semblance of the great organization they once were. They might even have to agree to give up their tax-exempt status or be forced to refrain from any lobbying or political activity.

Or perhaps they’ll keep on their present course until the judge declares the organization to be totally corrupt and either dissolves it completely, as Attorney General James is demanding, or puts it into receivership pending a total reorganization.

Whatever the end result, you can be sure that the NRA as we’ve known it for the past 150 years, is gone, and it will be many more years – if ever – before it will again be a serious player in US politics.

The emperor and all of his courtiers are glibly marching into a New York courtroom stark naked. What’s worse, they know they’re naked, but their answer to their nakedness is to clamp their eyes tightly shut. Perhaps if the leaders of the various state associations were to work together to have a coherent voice, they could help prevent the coming collapse or at least be able to pick up some of the pieces, but most of them appear to have their eyes firmly shut as well.

What a sad state of affairs.

Even so, there is good news in the midst of the tragic demise of an organization that once changed history and saved the Second Amendment. The enemies of freedom will probably soon lose their biggest fundraising bugaboo. And yet, the Second Amendment itself is as healthy and as strongly defended as ever. Other smaller, more nimble, and scrappier groups have stepped into the breach. Namely the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and Gun Owners of America (GOA). But those smaller teams will need support, both financially and from you, the greater Gun Lobby. Stormy days are coming. Be ready to do your part.

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- You probably heard about the NRA’s big Annual Meeting and Exhibits scheduled for Houston, Texas on September 3-5 of this year. And you probably heard that those events were canceled just over a week before they were scheduled to begin!

All this was supposedly because exhibitors were afraid of COVID-19 Delta. But did you hear about the rescheduled NRA Annual Meeting of Members on October 2nd 2021, in Charlotte, North Carolina? If you did, congratulations! You’re paying attention! Unfortunately, most of the rest of the NRA membership isn’t really paying attention, and they either don’t know that the meeting is about to happen or don’t know that attendance will be limited, requiring preregistration, which I’ve been told was already maxed out over a week ago.

The October 2 2021 meeting date was only announced to NRA Directors on September 12, just 3 weeks before the event. According to “Wayback Machine” which tracks changes across the web, the NRAAM.org page announcing the cancellation appeared on August 25. On September 15 the Wayback Machine shows that the page changed to an announcement that “THE 2021 NRA ANNUAL MEETINGS & EXHIBITS HAS BEEN CANCELLED (sic) AND WILL NOT BE RESCHEDULED.”

That statement makes the following headline announcing that registration for the 2021 Annual Meeting is open, seem incongruent, and probably an artifact left over from the original Houston announcement. Only when you read the smaller print under that headline do you see mention of Charlotte and October 2.

Finally, on Wednesday, September 22, the website was changed so that it automatically forwarded visitors to a ticketing site offering registration for the Charlotte event. On Thursday, September 23, people were reporting that the event was “sold out,” with no more tickets available. Apparently, the room the NRA reserved for their Members’ Meeting, has a maximum capacity under COVID restrictions, of only a few hundred, and the lions share of the tickets were doled out in advance to Directors and their families and friends, just as happened with the Tucson meeting in 2020. Since it only requires 100 NRA members to constitute a quorum at a Members’ Meeting, that requirement can easily be met with just Directors and their spouses.

Of course, there was never any announcement about the Charlotte Meeting in any of the NRA magazines, but a few members have reported that they received an email letting them know about the meeting. Every one of the members who reported to me about receiving that email was an Annual Member who has not yet reached the 5 consecutive years of membership required to be vested with voting rights in the Association. Maybe that was just a coincidence?

Until just a few months ago, the NRA Bylaws required that information about the where and when of the Annual Meeting of Members – a business meeting that is required by law – must be published in at least two consecutive issues of the Official Journal of the NRA (the three or four pages of inside NRA information published toward the back of each of NRA’s magazines). That Bylaw fell by the wayside after the Association failed to meet that standard last year. After rescheduling and canceling the 2020 Annual Meeting several times, they finally settled on a short-notice, shoestring meeting at a hotel in Tucson. At a subsequent Board meeting, the Board changed the Bylaws, creating exceptions for the meeting requirement in extreme circumstances such as hurricanes or pandemics, and changing the meeting notice requirements.

Under the new Bylaws, the Association is just required to meet the minimum announcement requirements of the state in which the Association is incorporated – New York – which offers several options for alerting members to a meeting. The easiest and cheapest of those options is for the Association to publish an announcement at least once per week for three weeks prior to the scheduled meeting, in a newspaper in the local area of the Association’s primary business location. So the NRA, with some five million members nationwide, is only legally obligated to let those five million members know about their Annual Meeting of Members, by publishing a classified ad once per week for three weeks, in some local Fairfax, Virginia newspaper. But all indications are that they didn’t even bother to do that.

What can members do about the lack of notice of the meeting and the limited capacity of the meeting room? Sue? That would be just another opportunity for the current “leadership” to funnel even more member money into the pocket of the NRA’s $2 million per month attorney, Bill Brewer.

The obvious first question is, why was the original meeting canceled?

Even if exhibitors were uncomfortable with the idea of attending a huge trade show during a Delta variant surge in Texas, the Association could have canceled the exhibits and other ancillary events, retaining only the already planned Annual Meeting of Members and the subsequent Board of Directors’ meeting. That would have been the easiest option and one that would have avoided confusion while providing the best opportunity for NRA members to participate in their Association’s business. Not to mention guaranteeing that they were in compliance with the laws and their own Bylaws.

But of course, the NRA brass is not interested in members interfering – err excuse me – participating in the Association’s business, nor is there much evidence that they are worried to any great degree about adhering to the Bylaws, or the laws of the state of New York.

Instead, they canceled everything, then at the last minute quietly rolled out plans for the meeting to be held in Charlotte, leaving most members in the dark. On top of that, the location and venue they have selected are under masking and social-distancing mandates. Everyone who attends will be required to wear a mask, regardless of vaccination or prior infection with COVID-19, and the number of attendees that will be allowed into the meeting room will be further limited by capacity restrictions. At last year’s Tucson meeting, Directors and their families and friends, comprised at least half, if not two-thirds, of the attendees in the main room. Some additional people were able to participate from overflow seating on a patio just outside the meeting room, with closed-circuit TV feeds, but few of those people stayed long in the Arizona sun.

I had hoped to see NRA members make a solid, loud, angry showing at the Members’ Meeting in Houston. After all, Houston NRA members formed the core of the Federation for NRA, which was the group behind the Cincinnati Revolt in 1977. Our plan was for the members to raise such a ruckus that they would wake up their derelict Directors to the destructive choices they’ve been making, and convince them to take major steps toward protecting the NRA. Major steps like replacing Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and Secretary Jon Frazer, both named defendants in the lawsuit filed by the state of New York, and reorganizing the leadership of the Board of Directors, taking power away from “leaders” who have blatantly lied to the Board and NRA members, and who have been complicit in allowing LaPierre and company to rape the Association while neglecting their core responsibilities.

At this point, I see no chance of the Board doing anything at all to mitigate the coming disaster. For the NRA “the worst is yet to come.”

The New York Attorney General’s Office has made it abundantly clear that they intend to push for nothing less than the complete dissolution of the NRA, and they have built a devastating case to support that objective. The judge in the case has made it clear that dissolution of the Association is absolutely on the table, and he’s signaled that some of the claims NRA’s “leadership” and high-priced attorneys have made about their “strong legal position,” amount to tissue paper shields.

In short, the NRA is in serious trouble.

The Houston meeting might have been the last flickering hope of mitigating the devastating outcome we all see looming. With the cancellation of the Houston meeting and the subsequent scheduling of a limited, masked, distanced, and no doubt sparsely-attended (not to mention, tightly controlled) meeting in Charlotte, I honestly believe the battle to save the NRA has been lost. NRA Director Phil Journey will be virtually alone as a voice of reason on the Board, after the Charlotte Members’ Meeting, and I expect another wave of resignations from the Board within days of the close of that meeting.

If you are an NRA Voting Member (Life or at least 5-years consecutive membership), and you live within reasonable driving distance of Charlotte, I encourage you to attend and do your best to make your NRA Directors see the cultish mindset that has consumed the Board. Demand answers to simple questions like; “Why was Wayne given a $500k bonus while donations were down, membership was stagnant, Carry Guard was crashing, budgets were being cut across all NRA programs, there were growing accusations of impropriety, and Wayne admitted to having received over $300k in excess compensation,” and “Why are we paying Bill Brewer millions of dollars each month?”

I encourage your attendance knowing full well that there will be little opportunity to accomplish anything meaningful or worthwhile at the Members’ Meeting in Charlotte, but I know that a few stalwarts will be there to wave the flag for a rational approach. Your participation would be appreciated. If you can’t get a “ticket,” don’t be deterred. I believe there will be a whole bunch of no-shows, providing an opportunity for others to attend.

I expect the meeting in Charlotte to go very much like the meeting in Tucson did, beginning with a video message from outgoing President Meadows, apologizing for her inability to attend, and praising the amazing accomplishments of our Dear Leader, Wayne LaPierre. Then First Vice President Charles Cotton will take charge of the meeting, praising Wayne, and declaring that nothing that touches on anything involved in any of the various lawsuits can be discussed during the meeting, even though virtually all of it is a public record already, through depositions and testimony in the various suits and the bankruptcy trial.

At that moment the members should rise up and demand that Cotton relinquish the gavel as being biased and having serious conflicts of interest, and have the Parliamentarian chair the meeting. That won’t happen, but it should. Of course, the Parliamentarian was hired by and is paid by the current “leadership,” but he has his public reputation, certifications, and career to consider.

From there, the meeting will go into reports of the officers, where they’ll tell you what a great job everyone is doing, and what great accomplishments are just around the corner. Then they’ll finally get to Resolutions, where a few “disgruntled members” will try to express their frustration with poorly worded and confusing resolutions calling for various unspecified actions, and other resolutions calling for “No Confidence” votes against LaPierre and other “leaders.” Each of these will be met by a phalanx of Directors rising to say that the whole thing is silly, that everything’s great, and Wayne’s the only one who can lead the Association out of the bottom of this deep well that Wayne and this Board have dug us into.

Then someone will call for adjournment and the meeting will close.

Later that same day, the Board will hold their meeting. The officers will again tell everyone how great everything is, the Nominating Committee will offer a slate of candidates for officer positions, led by Wayne LaPierre for Executive Vice President and Charles Cotton for President. Hopefully, Phil Journey will then rise to nominate alternate candidates. There will probably be some argument about the nominating process, and the Board might even go into Executive Session to try to hide the appearance of any dissent within the Board. There will then be some argument about the voting process, trying to avoid secret ballots, and finally, a vote will be taken, Wayne and company will be reelected, there will be an effort made to have the record reflect the vote as “unanimous,” and the meeting will quickly be wrapped up.

That’s my prediction. I’ll let you know how close I came, shortly after the meeting.

If you’re thinking of attending the Members’ Meeting in Charlotte, be sure to go to NRAAM.org and try to reserve your seat in the meeting. If you can’t get a “ticket,” go anyway. For the Tucson meeting, they told many people they couldn’t register because all of the tickets had been reserved, then when ticket-holders failed to show up, those people who had been turned away weren’t around to claim the open seats, leaving lots of empty chairs.

When it comes to Second Amendment advocacy groups, the NRA isn’t just the 300-pound gorilla, they are an aircraft carrier with all other groups being PT boats and dinghies. While the rest of the fleet is agile and quick, and sometimes able to lay down some serious, concentrated fire, none of them can do what the NRA can do, and not one of them is in a position to grow into that role. The NRA’s membership list alone is more valuable than all other 2A groups combined. We’ve seen how such a powerful organization is a two-edged sword, but not having them would be very difficult, so we need to try to save the Association, in spite of the foolish actions of the Board of Directors.

I think our last, meager hope will be a letter-writing campaign to the judge. I’ll keep you posted on that idea as things develop. Meanwhile, keep your powder dry, support your local grassroots organizations, and keep reading AmmoLand News.

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- We’ve warned the NRA Board.

We’ve talked with past presidents and high-level insiders. We’ve advised, pleaded, and begged them to take action to prove that the Association’s governing body is in charge of the Association, that Directors understand their fiduciary duty is to the membership and not to serve as lackeys to Wayne LaPierre and his accomplices, co-conspirators, apologists, and enablers.

We have repeatedly detailed and documented the exorbitant salaries and contractor payments, the self-dealing, cronyism, fraud, kickbacks, and abuse that has been ongoing at the top of the Association for years. We’ve consulted with legal and financial experts, reporting their analysis and advice, and we’ve urged members to lobby their NRA Directors, just as they would their members of Congress or local government, demanding accountability and transparency.

We warned that, unless the Board stepped up and took significant actions to root out any hint of corruption or malfeasance, the New York Attorney General and the courts would use the lack of action as proof that the Association is corrupt to the core, and undeserving of any sort of second chance or opportunity to reorganize.

NRA Directors chose to ignore it all as just political attacks and those negative Knoxes grinding their daddy’s old axe.

NRA Board Fails to Take Corrective Action

On Monday, August 16, the NY AG filed a 193-page Revised and Amended Complaint against the NRA and four named defendants; EVP Wayne LaPierre, Secretary John Frazer, former Treasurer Woody Phillips, and former Deputy EVP Josh Powell. You can read the document by clicking the link above or below, or going to www.FirearmsCoalition.org. Please do read it and share it, as it’s very enlightening.

Just as we had predicted, the AG’s Amended Complaint digs deeply into the testimony of NRA officials and vendors during the NRA’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy trial, including damning testimony from LaPierre himself, and a couple of hours worth of “On the advice of counsel, I wish to invoke my rights under the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution and refuse to answer that question,” from former Treasurer Woody Phillips. And just as we had predicted, the AG is now focusing heavily on the Board’s failure to take substantive action to correct problems, its failure to distance the Association from those accused of wrongdoing, and its failure to institute policies and procedures to ensure no further abuse or malfeasance can occur, as well as instituting safeguards to ensure strict compliance with those policies and procedures.

The AG’s Amended Complaint points out, not only the Board’s failure to take any of the needed actions, but also the fact that additional abuse and misspending has occurred since the problems were clearly disclosed to the Board, and many of those abuses were actually approved by the Board or by committees of the Board, after the adoption of, and in direct contradiction to, their claimed “course correction” policies.

We’ve probably passed the point of no return, and it seems unlikely that the Association can be salvaged by any action of the Board. Even if the Board were to elect a new slate of officers, including a new Executive Vice President to replace Wayne LaPierre, which they could have done at their now-canceled Houston meeting, it’s likely that the judge would see the action as too little, too late. But that’s the only rational action any Board member could take to distance themselves from the lies, corruption, and gross mismanagement that’s been going on under their noses.
We had hoped NRA members would show up in droves at the Houston Annual Meeting of Members, to demand that the Board stop making excuses, and start taking substantive action to protect the Association. The decision to cancel the Houston meetings, and all of the events surrounding them, leave everything in limbo. The recently elected directors can’t be seated until the Association holds an Annual Meeting, meaning that the current Board remains in office. Election of officers can’t take place until the first Board meeting after the Annual Meeting of Members.

So Carolyn Meadows remains as President, Charles Cotton remains as 1st Vice President, Willes Lee remains as 2nd Vice President, and Wayne LaPierre remains as Executive Vice President and CEO.

The NRA Bylaws have long required that an Annual Meeting of Members be held every year prior to November 30. But at some point during the past year, the Board voted to amend the Bylaws to qualify that requirement with an exception for “acts of God,” such as a hurricane or a pandemic. That new bylaw gives the Board plenty of room to delay or even completely forego a Members’ Meeting this year. I expect though, that they will hold some sort of abbreviated meeting, similar to the one they held last year in Tucson, where Board members and their wives almost outnumbered Voting Members in attendance. Their hope would be to avoid a large turnout of angry members demanding change.

A shake-up in Houston was probably wishful thinking, and even if we could have pulled it off, it’s unlikely that it would have changed what’s coming. At this point, with or without major changes in the leadership structure and management of the Association, knowledgeable observers say it’s a better than even-money bet that the Association will be in receivership within a few months, with criminal charges filed against some staff and key Board members.

Nonetheless, I plan to be at the Members’ Meeting, whenever and wherever it eventually is held, trying to convince the Board to do what they should have done years ago. If members still had the legal authority to take substantive actions at the Members’ Meeting, as they did in Cincinnati in 1977, that’s what we would be trying to do. But the membership has been neutered over the intervening years, almost always with orchestrated votes by the members themselves. Today, members at an Annual Meeting have no real power, beyond creating a record and having a stage from which to possibly influence Directors.

The NRA is way more than just a rights advocacy organization. No other organization has the infrastructure and experience to take over the myriad of things the NRA does. Rebuilding the NRA will take years. Building something comparable from scratch, or even from an existing organization, would take decades, if possible at all. The New York court could turn out to be the Association’s last hope if the judge installs a good trustee to reorganize the Association with guidance from a Members’ Committee.

There’s no telling what the NRA “leadership” will do next. Whatever they do, we’ll let you know. If they do announce a new date, time, and place for a Members’ Meeting, I hope to see you there. You are the Gun Lobby, not the NRA, but the NRA has been the most powerful tool in our fight for rights, so I’m not going to let it go without a fight.

---

NY AG Letitia James Files a Revised & Amended Complaint Against NRA August 16th, 2021

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- Time is running out on the Comment Period for the BATFE’s proposed changes to the definitions of “Firearms,” “Frames and Receivers,” and the marking of same.

In short, the proposed regulations would define as a “firearm” the upper receiver or slide of a firearm, as well as the barrel of a firearm, and possibly other parts, all at ATF’s discretion. As firearms, those parts would require serialization, maker information, and all of the other controls and restrictions currently applied only to lower receivers. The regulation also redefines “Gunsmith” and the word “readily,” as it applies to phrases currently in the regulations about guns that may be “readily restored” to fire in fully automatic mode, or “readily converted” to expel a projectile.

The objective is to control and regulate the lawful sale of major firearm components and restrict what gun owners can legally do to modify their personal guns, or to build their own firearms.

The comment period closes on August 19, 2021, so it’s important that you get your comment in before that deadline.

Comments should be businesslike, factual, and to the point, and should never include vulgarities or threats. Additionally, declaring “shall not be infringed,” has not proven to be a successful argument. Copying and pasting the arguments of others, or pieces of them, is not a good strategy, as the agency is looking for original thoughts, not ditto marks. Comments don’t need to be long and detailed, but a valid argument does help, and can seem to make an impact.

Below is a sample comment I am submitting. You are welcome to steal ideas, but please couch them in your own words, not mine. It’s best to read the proposed regulation, to have a clear understanding of what is being proposed, then write your comment.

You will find the draft regulation here. Follow the links to the Comments section.

You may submit comments on or before August 19, 2021, by mail, fax, or the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov.

---

“I am writing in strong opposition to the proposed regulatory changes in the Definition of Frame or Receiver and Identification of Firearms.

The ATF is overstepping their authority with this proposal. Such a major change to firearm definitions is the purview of Congress, not the ATF.

The US has operated under the existing definitions since at least 1968, with much of it dating back to 1934 or before, with only minor adjustments during all of that time. Very little has changed regarding firearm design or function since those definitions were developed, and certainly nothing so drastic as to warrant these major changes. While manufacturing technology has advanced, and some would argue that it is more available today, the reality is that our fathers and grandfathers, most of whom worked with their hands and had a wide variety of tools at their disposal, along with the skills to use them, we’re much more capable of home manufacture of firearms than the vast majority of Americans today, even with the expensive new tools.

Americans have always had the ability – and the right – to make and modify guns.

What has really changed is a false alarm raised by those who don’t like civilian ownership of any sort of firearm. They are constantly looking for angles to encroach on the right to arms. Whenever they find some particular gun, feature, or practice that can alarm their base and the uninformed public, they ride it for all it’s worth. That is what is going on in this case and what has instigated the current proposed regulation.

The documents supporting this proposal include a number of false assumptions, chief among them being the idea that marking and regulating more parts of a firearm, will reduce firearms-related crime, or assist in the solving of crimes. There is no valid evidence to support this claim, and there is plenty of evidence that it is a pipe-dream.

The estimated costs of the proposal are also distorted. The regulatory burden alone will cost gun manufacturers, distributors, retailers, gun owners, and police and sheriffs offices, untold millions of dollars in man-hours, not to mention new tools and equipment. In the case of law enforcement, this represents money and man-hours that would otherwise be spent on actually preventing and investigating crimes. These are funds and resources that law enforcement agencies – and the public – simply can’t afford to be wasting on bureaucratic busywork that has little impact on crime or the activities of criminals.

And that’s the crux of the issue: These proposed regulations, if implemented, would have little effect on criminals, but would have major impacts on regular gun owners and the industry that serves us.

Riding herd on the public as our “Gun Nannies,” is not supposed to be the ATF’s mission. Stopping and catching violent criminals who use firearms to harm and intimidate others is what you’re supposed to be doing, and this proposal does not advance that mission at all.

The proposal should be scrapped in its entirety.”

---

…but wait there is more.

There is another ATF proposal regarding the classification of firearms with arm braces attached, that you should also leave a comment on. That comment window closes on September 8, 2021, and can be accessed by clicking here. I hope to have more about that in another column soon.

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA, has been coming under more intensive fire since Joe Biden was declared President of the United States, and it’s our own fault.

The PLCAA should just be the PLCA, the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act. The only reason the words “in Arms” were included, was specifically to make the bill a “gun bill,” to help motivate the troops and provide brownie points and bragging rights to politicians and lobbying organizations.

The introduction of the PLCAA was a legitimate response to the lawfare waged against the gun industry, but the legislation should have been much broader, encompassing all lawfully manufactured and sold products. By focusing the bill exclusively on the arms industry, proponents made garnering support for it a bit easier within the gun-rights world – while at the same time focusing opposition – and they avoided generating additional opposition from the powerful trial lawyers’ lobby, which opposed the bill, but didn’t put a lot of effort into their opposition.

They also painted a big, bright bullseye on the back of the law, and that’s what the Biden administration is aiming at now.

The above points were argued by Neal Knox back in 2004 when the PLCAA was first introduced. He reasoned that a broader bill would be somewhat harder to sell, and would run up against some stronger opposition, but that it would also bring in additional allies, and result in better law in the end.

The core premise of the PLCAA is that a manufacturer or seller of a lawful product, which is not defective and was not marketed under false pretexts, should not, and indeed may not, be held responsible for the misuse of that product by a third-party actor.

This should be true, regardless of what the product is. In fact, in most of the lawsuits that have been brought seeking to hold a manufacturer or seller of a lawful product accountable for the actions of someone misusing their product, the courts have ended up throwing the suits out as “frivolous” or unreasonable. But “most” is not good enough, and in the case of firearms and ammunition, the suits were becoming more and more frequent, and were well-funded, often with taxpayer dollars. They weren’t just occasional, random attempts by unscrupulous attorneys taking pot-shots at gun companies in hopes the companies would settle before the cases got tossed. The litigants acted with a clear and coordinated intent to bankrupt the firearms industry, not necessarily through winning, but by forcing the industry to defend itself. Repeatedly.

In any civil litigation, there’s a calculation that has to be made, weighing the cost of the litigation against the cost of settling early. Often the settlement costs are substantially lower than the litigation costs, even if the case is eventually tossed by the judge.

What the PLCAA effectively does is create a pretrial reality check, requiring the judge to look at the case right at the outset and determine whether there is a reasonable claim, or whether it is a case of someone trying to hold an innocent party responsible for the actions of an unrelated guilty party.

This should be standard procedure in all civil litigation. No individual, group, or government entity should be able to weaponize the courts as a way of beating down a person, business, or industry.

Along with the protections of judicial review up-front, before a whole lot of money has been spent on attorneys, and the restitution of those attorney fees if the case gets tossed, there should also be protections on the backside of civil litigation, in the form of restitution of legal fees for the prevailing party. That’s something the trial lawyers’ lobby has opposed for decades because it would cause many of their clients to hesitate before going forward with frivolous and abusive litigation.

The most prevalent talking point from opponents of the PLCAA, As we just heard again from Governor Cuomo in New York, is that the gun industry is the only industry in the US that enjoys protection from civil suits. While that’s not really true, the perception of imbalance is unacceptable, so it’s time to protect all lawful businesses from predatory legal assaults. While we continue to defend the PLCAA, The Firearms Coalition is proposing that members of Congress start working on the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act, shielding all lawful businesses from abusive lawfare attacks based on the actions of unrelated third parties. The PLCA would provide restitution of legal fees to victims of such abuse, both upfront, and on the backside of these attacks if they are allowed to proceed.

We might not have the votes to pass it until 2023, after the next congressional election, but let’s get it started right now.

You can help. Send a letter to your friendly Representative and Senators, urging them to support the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act. Include a copy of this article or a link to it, so they can see how and why it makes sense.

You are the Gun Lobby. Use your influence to get solid pro-rights legislation introduced and passed, even if it doesn’t mention guns.

We’ll have more to say about this proposal soon, so stay tuned.

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- By now you’ve probably heard, or heard about, some of the outrageous statements made by President Joe Biden in his widely-touted speech to address the nation’s sudden spike in violent crime. The whole dog and pony show – led by the lying dog-face pony soldier in chief – was focused on gun control, specifically to distract from the other aspects of Biden’s initiative, and the dismal state of things in general under the Biden administration.

Even though the press conference was an unmitigated disaster, with Uncle Joe wandering so far off a script that even the historically protective “fact-checkers” were forced to rate some of his statements, such as the claim that; “The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own,” as 4 Pinocchio, pants on fire, falsehoods – in other words, lies. Biden went on to claim that at the time the Second Amendment was written, “you couldn’t buy cannons,” which is also unquestionably untrue.

Biden also wandered off-Teleprompter to take another crack at a line that had bombed for him during primary season, Jefferson’s famous quote about the “blood of patriots and tyrants.” This is as close as I can transcribe it from several video replays:

Those who say the blood of liberty… the, uh… blood of patriots… you know, and all this stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government… Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there’s never been – if you wanna – think you need weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons. The point is, there’s always been the ability to limit – to rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who can own it.

What?

Once you sort through the babble and get a grasp on what he’s intending to say, it’s easy to understand how his previous attempt at this statement concluded with him garnering only 8.4% of the vote in the New Hampshire Primary, far behind Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and even Elizabeth Warren, leading many analysts to declare his campaign for President dead at that point. In that instance though, Biden couched his argument in more cogent, and even more threatening terms, when he said;

“Those who say ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’ – a great line – well guess what: The fact is, if you’re going to take on the government you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you if you’re worried about the government knocking down your door.”

Resident Biden’s mental decline in the past 18 months, is both obvious, and scary. This is the “leader of the free world?” The man who has Armageddon following him in a briefcase everywhere he goes, and who’s supposed to have certain nuclear launch codes memorized? […not a chance]

Vladimir Putin must be shaking in his boots after their recent meeting.

The brightest political strategist in the country couldn’t have come up with anything for Biden to say that would have outraged knowledgeable gun owners and history buffs more than these statements did. His nonsense rant guaranteed that irate gun guys would be howling for weeks, refuting Biden’s comments with tidbits from history, to prove how smart and knowledgeable we are, and how ignorant and out-of-touch he is. Unfortunately, all of this outrage and fact-checking is doing little more than to distract from the things the Biden team wants to keep under wraps.

The whole press conference, with its focus on the gun control aspects of the “Biden Plan” to stem violent crime, was definitely intended to distract from the other serious problems that are burning out of control around the country since Biden took over.

Biden and his crew have been dismantling anything and everything with President Trump’s fingerprints on it, regardless of how good or effective it might have been. The economy, inflation, astronomical debt, the border crisis, tensions in the Middle-East, tensions with Russia, tensions with China, the embarrassing Fauci “lab leak” theory, and just about anything and everything that the Biden administration has weighed in on, demonstrates a reverse Midas touch.

The problems that Trump seemed to have corralled, or at least damped down, all exploded with the advent of the Biden-Harris team, especially those things that Biden and Harris most harshly criticized Trump about.

But Biden’s biggest problem isn’t inflation, continuing unemployment, the slow economic recovery, world instability, or the growing number of kids in cages on the border. His biggest problem is the big divide within his party. The brains behind Biden-Harris – which we know don’t reside in the skulls of Biden or Harris – have recognized that the Democrats’ “woke” progressive wing, represented by academia, Silicon Valley, and a gaggle of radicals that unapologetically cite Marx and display the hammer and sickle, are fully at odds with the voting base of the Democratic Party. The adults among the Democrats – and there are some – recognize that the most important thing needed to reduce crime is more and better policing and putting bad actors in jail for extended periods. That view directly contradicts the idea of defunding the police, which is a major factor – maybe The major factor – in the current violent crime surge.

So Biden’s crime reduction plan not unreasonably includes increased funding for police, along with funding for various social programs, violence intervention, mental health, job training, and other programs. Some of it is potentially worthwhile, while a lot of it is just throwing money at the problem, creating opportunities for corruption and cover for the bad actors.

Their big worry for the press conference was to keep the focus away from the refunding of police, and far away from the root causes of the surge in violent crime: support for criminals, violent rioters, and looters, over the police and property owners.

Just as the “Broken Window” theory of policing shows that enforcing minor laws reduces the frequency of violations of major laws, the inverse is also true. Ignoring minor and major crimes has sent a clear signal to criminals and the criminally minded, that it’s open season. By bailing out violent rioters and looters – as Kamala Harris encouraged – and reducing or eliminating bail, reducing major felonies down to minor misdemeanors, releasing violent criminals early, and refusing to prosecute violent criminals, calling that “justice reform,” prosecutors, judges, and politicians have thrown the lid off of Pandora’s box, and invited career criminals and their young thug proteges, to do as they will and fear no consequences.

That’s the big truth that Joe Biden’s handlers don’t want penetrating into the public psyche, so they focus their attention on an issue that has a pretty clear, preexisting, culture war divide: gun control.

The tactic worked to some degree, but the American people are beginning to realize that they made a huge mistake last November, and now they’re trying to figure out what to do about it.

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. The main thing is to support Republican obstructionism, to keep the damage done by the extremist Democrats to a minimum. Then, in November of 2022, we can send a loud and clear message to DC, that we want no part of the crazy, criminal-empowering Democratic agenda.

It seems like a far-off objective, but believe me, the 2022 elections will be here before you know it, and GunVoters need to be ready and already engaged when they get here.

Stay tuned and stay armed.

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- The following is a slightly edited version of a plea I wrote for a GoFundMe campaign for my friend Albert Kwan. It should make your blood boil.

In 2005, Albert Kwan was living the American dream. Then the US government stepped in and turned his world upside down for no valid reason. They incarcerated him, ruined his reputation, destroyed his businesses, and almost cost him his US Army pension, then they prosecuted him on bogus charges that took Kwan over a decade, and almost a half-million dollars to overcome.

Today, Albert Kwan lives primarily on his small military pension, which he was supplementing with Christian mission work and recruiting of students for a US foreign exchange program, but a recent stroke and subsequent eye surgeries now limit his ability to travel or do that work.

I first wrote about Albert’s abuse at the hands of federal agents, back in 2009. Since then, he’s been exonerated in the gun cases, but the feds are still refusing to issue him an FFL, and now, with his health taking a turn for the worse, a group of us are raising money to help him with his current living expenses, and hopefully to build some savings with which to hire an attorney to sue the US government for the unjustifiable abuse they have put him through.

Caught-Up In an Unrelated Murder Investigation

In 2005, Albert Kwan was approached by federal agents investigating the 2001 murder of a US Attorney in Seattle. Authorities were able to determine that the gun used was a Makarov. They also determined that the gun had been updated with a popular aftermarket barrel. Kwan happened to be among the thousands of people who had purchased one of the 3,500 barrels known to have been sold. As a gun collector and former licensed firearms dealer, it is not unusual at all that Albert had purchased one of the barrels for one of the several Makarovs in his extensive collection, and Albert had no objection to the investigators inspecting his Makarovs or the aftermarket barrel.

Problems arose though, when Albert, in accordance with the advice he had received from his attorney, refused to allow FBI and BATFE agents unfettered access to his home and gun collection.

Instead, he gave the requested guns and parts to his attorney who passed them on to the federal agents. There was also an issue regarding how many barrels Kwan had purchased. Federal agents insisted, based on incomplete and chaotic sales and shipping records, that some 10 years prior, Kwan had purchased two of the suspect barrels, but Kwan insisted that he recalled purchasing only one barrel of the type the FBI was seeking. He turned over all of his Makarovs and barrels, along with similar Walther pistols and barrels, but the federal agents weren’t satisfied.

They felt that Kwan’s refusal to allow them to search his home was suspicious. They also had a suspect in the murder who happened to have lived near Kwan for a time, though there was no indication that they ever met.

With those two issues nagging at them, the agents discovered that Kwan had made arrangements to travel to China. Even though the trip had been planned months before Kwan had any contact with federal agents, and he routinely traveled back and forth to China, often several times a year, they characterized the trip as an attempt to flee.

Agents stopped Kwan at the airport, put him in handcuffs, and drug him to the Federal Court House in Seattle where they informed him that he was under arrest as a “material witness” in the investigation into the murder of US Attorney Thomas Wales.

Albert was held in solitary confinement in a Federal Detention Facility for over 20 days. He was handcuffed and shackled repeatedly and questioned over and over again about the supposed second Makarov barrel. Throughout his incarceration and afterward, federal agents issued press releases naming Kwan, or describing him, and implying that he was somehow connected to the murder of Thomas Wales. This exposure did serious damage to Albert Kwan’s reputation, destroying his commercial real estate business, costing him his Top Secret security clearance, and causing him to be suspended from his position in the US Army Reserves.

ATF Creates Evidence for False Gun Charges

After arresting Kwan, FBI agents obtained a warrant, and with a BATFE “firearms expert” in tow, they searched Albert’s house and gun collection, finding nothing of the “missing” Makarov barrel or anything else related to the Wales murder case. But the BATFE agent used the opportunity to identify certain guns in Kwan’s collection, which he thought might be “questionable,” so the very next day, a new warrant was issued to the BATFE, authorizing them to search Kwan’s home for illegal weapons.

The BATFE search yielded two guns that they claimed were illegal, and Kwan was threatened with prosecution for those two guns if he continued to refuse to tell the murder investigators what they wanted to know. Kwan insisted that he had told them everything he knew and that he was unable to change his story.

Federal prosecutors followed through on their threats, charging Kwan first with illegal possession of an unregistered machine gun, and later with illegal possession of an unregistered Short-Barreled Rifle.

The first “illegal” gun was an M14 rifle that had been legally built by a government contractor as a semi-auto-only, target rifle, and legally sold by a government agency to the civilian market back in the 1960s.

After modifying the gun with numerous parts from another full-auto M14 that Kwan legally owned, and spending some time modifying the receiver with a grinding tools, the BATFE “experts” were eventually able to make the gun fire full-auto.

After hearing the evidence and looking at the amount of work done by the BATFE “experts” to turn the gun into a full-auto, the jury concluded that the gun was a legal semi-automatic target rifle, just as Kwan had maintained. He was acquitted on that charge, but BATFE said they couldn’t return the rifle since it was now a machine gun and couldn’t be legally converted back. They destroyed both that gun and the full-auto M14 used as a parts donor. The original rifle, as a very unique sample, would be valued at several thousand dollars, and the legal, full-auto rifle would sell today for around $20,000.00 or more.

Kwan received no compensation for either.

Kwan was also charged with having an unregistered, Short-Barreled Rifle because they found a HK VP70Z pistol and a combination holster/stock for a VP70M. The BATFE claimed that, since the pistol was capable of accepting the stock, this constituted “constructive possession” of a Short-Barreled Rifle. They made this claim, even though Kwan also owned a legally registered, full-auto VP70M that was registered as a Short-Barreled Rifle. The BATFE insisted that the critical distinction was that the semi-auto version of the pistol was capable of accepting the shoulder stock. They convinced the jury and Kwan was found guilty, but the judge learned that the BATFE had misrepresented several pertinent facts, and he reversed the jury verdict, declaring a mistrial.

It took Kwan almost a decade to finally be declared Not Guilty and exonerated on all charges. It also cost him his life’s savings and then some.

Conclusion

In the end, Albert Kwan, who had served honorably in the US Army and Reserves for 29 years, first in the Infantry and later in Intelligence, where he was granted a Top Secret/SCI security clearance, worked for the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, and had started and run several successful businesses, including a commercial real estate business, interpreter services, recruiting for student exchange programs, and running a federally licensed firearms business, as well as assisting with Christian mission work overseas, was kidnapped by federal agents, held against his will, and prosecuted for non-crimes, all because he followed his lawyer’s advice and said No when federal agents asked to search his home without a warrant.

Now, at the age of 60, Albert suffers from premature health issues, including suffering a mild stroke and needing surgeries on both of his eyes. His reputation in the business community is still tainted. He was able to recover his Army pension but missed the opportunity to serve with his unit in a second deployment to Afghanistan. He was forced to send most of his firearm collection into storage out of state, where it was pillaged by thieves, and he was recently denied his final appeal in trying to force the BATFE to issue him a new Federal Firearms License, which means that he cannot resume his firearm business.

The whole ordeal has cost Albert close to a half-a-million dollars.

The federal government has never apologized for what they did to Albert, and they’ve never paid anything in the way of restitution or compensation for what they took from him. While he’s not destitute, he is struggling to make ends meet, and has been forced to sell some of his most prized possessions, just to cover taxes on his long-time home.

I, and others, believe the US government owes Albert Kwan something, and we’re hoping that a GoFundMe campaign will not only help Albert meet his current financial needs but that it will enable him to fund a retainer fee for a civil rights attorney to file suit for wrongful prosecution and abuse of power against the federal government [read: BATF].

You can contribute to Albert’s GoFundMe campaign by clicking here. Any help you choose to give is greatly appreciated.