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How many errors can USA Today make in a single article on gun laws?
Story here.
"A review of congressional legislative records, federal lobbying disclosure forms, as well as interviews with former ATF agents, shows how the NRA has repeatedly supported legislation to weaken several of the nation's gun laws and opposed any attempt to boost the ability of the Bureau of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to enforce current laws, including:
The Firearms Owners' Protection Act of 1986. This law mandated that the ATF could only inspect firearms dealers once a year. It reduced record-keeping penalties from felonies to misdemeanors, prohibited the ATF from computerizing purchase records for firearms and required the government to prove that a gun dealer was "willful" if they sold a firearm to a prohibited person."
No, FOPA says BATF can randomly inspect once a year. It can inspect additionally anytime a gun is "traced" to a dealer, or if they have evidence of specific misconduct. Certain conduct has to be proven "willful" (made in known violation of the law) to secure a conviction. A dealer who deliberately sells to a prohibited person is hardly in a position to claim he didn't know that this was illegal.
"The Tiahrt amendments. Beginning in 2003, the amendments by then-representative Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., to the Justice Department's appropriation bill included requirements such as the same-day destruction of FBI background check documents and limits on the sharing of data from traces."
As I recall, the same-day destruction requirement is only for persons who passed the background check. How would that, or sharing trace data with others, impair law enforcement?
"One provision in the law Vizzard cited as particularly vexing to the ATF was that false record keeping for dealers was reduced to a misdemeanor, meaning if an ATF agent audited a gun dealer missing 1,200 guns, the dealer could not be charged with a federal offense.
"You just don't get many U.S. attorneys filing misdemeanors in federal court," he said."
Sure. Just go out and violate a National Park or National Forest Service regulation, and see how hard it is for them to get a U.S. Attorney to file misdemeanor charges.
"ATF records show the agency had 1,622 agents and 826 industry investigators in 1973 compared with 2,574 agents and 833 investigators in 2012.
Meanwhile the number of firearms owned in the United States has only grown."
And the number of licensed dealers has shrunk.
"The agency has not had a permanent director since 2006, the same year the Congress passed a bill to require the head of the ATF to be confirmed by the Senate like their counterparts in the FBI - a bill supported by the NRA.... President Obama recently nominated B. Todd Jones, the ATF's current acting director, to fill the leadership void permanently. While the NRA has yet to weigh in on his nomination, key senators, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have already called for a thorough investigation of his record."
Hello? USA Today? Jones was confirmed by the Senate over a year ago, and recently resigned.
"Ronald Carter, who served as acting director in 2009, said the blame for the ATF's troubles ultimately lies with Congress and said it was time for the bureau to have a permanent head.
"ATF is not exactly loved," Carter said. "They passed the Brady Bill, but they never gave it any teeth. There are no penalties.""
A former acting director never heard that the agency now has a director? And doesn't know that Brady Act violations are felonies, carrying penalties of up to five or ten years? I hope he was misquoted.
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FYI Someone at WTSP dredged up a two year old story. It was published 2/13/2013.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/02/07/nra-interferes-with-atf-operations/1894355/
The USA Today story has no listed author. Is that because it is absolute dreck?
Please correct me if I'm wrong....
ATF is a regulatory agency.....They just enforce laws, they don't make them...right?
Seems to me they are making rules and laws up as they go along........
Congress has abrogated its power and breached the trust of the people by letting the executive agencies promulgate rules and regulations. Under our system of government, We the People, not as a single Body-politic, but as many state-level bodies-politic, gave certain explicit powers to the federal government. Those grants were to each of the three branches and the expectation of trust is that each branch will ONLY exercise the power granted to it. No authority was granted to Congress to redelegate any powers to any other entity. The adage is, Delegata potestas non potest delegari. That which has been delegated cannot be further delegated. Not a single rule or regulation promulgated by bureaucrats is constitutionally valid because Congress is not authorized to transfer any of their powers regardless of how much work it would be for Congress to have to carry out its Constitutional duties. Too many in the legal profession sit idly by and accept the changes. We have a supreme law in the USA and that law is a contract among all the members. In that law the members of the many societies that make up the USA agree to certain specific transfers of individual authority to a weak central government. In order to change that law, the Framers set up a method of amendment. The method of amending the supreme law does not provide for simply reinterpreting words whenever those in power decide to do so. The sole meaning of the entire Constitution is dependent on what the PEOPLE say it means NOT on what subordinate branches of government claim. None of the entities created by the Constitution has any authority to interpret the Constitution. The claims by the courts are simply made up from whole cloth. Try going in and telling YOUR boss his/her job. That is what the court does every time it interprets the Constitution. The court, a creation of the Constitution whose existence would disappear without the Constitution, has lied to the people and pretends they have the authority to interpret the Constitution. They get away with it because the people are brain-washed in the public schools and in every day life to believe the courts and, at the top/end, the supreme court have the authority to tell us what OUR laws/rules/regulations FOR them mean. We are superior to the government. At least that was the concept of the formation of our system of government, which has been turned on its head and is now nothing more than a paternalistic government like those the Framers left.
John Locke asked: "For what is the point of drawing up dumb, silent statements of laws, if anybody may attach a new meaning to the words to suit his own taste, find some remote interpretation, and twist the words to fit the situation and his own opinion?"
Search the term Puerto Rico Trust Fund # 62. Be Amazed. This is where the ATF claims to get its authority.
Terms and definition are convoluted to HIDE the lawlessness. See also 27 USCA , sec. 201. Regarding Jurisdiction. Also only the FIRST sale of a firearm imported is in the scope of ATF powers , if it has any at all.-- U.S. vs. DJ Volmer & Co.
ABOLISH the criminal ATF. HR 1329.
Where is Congress granted the power to punish any of the actions they claim power to punish in these firearms laws?
Why was it NECESSARY to explicitly grant punishment power for counterfeiting?
Why is it not necessary to explicitly grant power to punish other actions such as tax evasion?
Why does the necessary and proper clause grant expansive powers where no explicit grant is made but failed to grant expansive power for things like punishing counterfeiting, piracies on the high seas, felonies on the high seas, and even treason?
If inherent powers were a part of our system , would punishment of treason not be one of those inherent powers?
If treason should be an inherent power why didn't the Framers recognize that and waste all that time adding and defining treason?
Is it not true that the federal government only has about 6 punishment powers and that EVERYTHING else the feds punish is actually unconstitutional, regardless of what the courts have pulled out of their arses?
Were the Framers just stupid and/or ignorant when they granted certain police powers to the federal government and left ALL the rest to the States?
Or are WE just stupid and/or ignorant because we THINK we know better, or can read between the lines, or are simply incredulous that the Framers envisioned a federal government of EXTREMELY limited powers, even limited to almost no police powers, leaving the bulk of police powers in the hands of State authorities?
Would leaving the police power to the State and keeping it out of the hands of the federal government not result in a better separation of power than occurs now with false interpretations by entities with no authority to interpret?