US Senator Diane Feinstein - looking to Obama Executive Orders to ban guns. - Granite Grok

US Senator Diane Feinstein – looking to Obama Executive Orders to ban guns.

She’s at it again – wanting to disarm the American public.  This time, she shows that she’s no stalwart of the constitutional process if it means she can use other means to get to her end point.  Thus, with Obama promising to go around Congress, she’s all in for handing the Senate and House’s Constitutional responsibilities over to the Executive Branch.  So, we wonder why we are in such deep sneakers as a country with such feckless leaders?  Here is her letter to The Won:

The President
The White House
Washington, DC  20500

Dear Mr. President:

During your State of the Union address, you stated that you want to make 2014 a “year of action.”  We write to urge you to take immediate action to address the significant number of assault weapons that are being imported into the United States in contravention of federal law.  We respectfully request that you take steps to ensure that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) fully enforces the ban on the importation of these military-style firearms.

Let me translate:  since I can’t get this passed legislatively  with the positive votes of duly elected representatives of the people, I, an Uber-Progressive, wish to piggy-back on your unilateral (and possibly unConstitutional) use of your pen and phone to make this happen.  Once again, they use a technology that is over 130 years old: one trigger press and one round downrange.  They are NOT anymore powerful than any other rifle – the caliber is the same, the rounds are the same as any old-fashioned rifle or pistol.

A provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 925(d)(3), prohibits the importation of firearms that are not “generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.”  In recent years, however, importers of firearms have taken advantage of ATF’s interpretation of the “sporting purposes” test to evade the import ban.

Translation: I dunno of any other means, but I’m going to loft a Hail Mary and hope you beLIEVE!  Let’s see – can a shoot a paper target with it?  Yup.  Can I shoot steel with such?  Yup.  Can I shoot varmints with them?  Absolutely.

But the thing that torques me is this – she is having a hissy fit over the fact that manufacturers will actually look at the law and make their product to match up with them?  And then have the temerity to use the language “have taken advantage of ATF’s interpretation”?  People and companies do that each and every day!  They have to – there are so many laws, statutes, regulations and Nanny-staters in government that anyone trying to do otherwise is just throwing dollar bills into a pit fire.

In 1998, the Department of the Treasury — which then housed ATF — issued guidance that interpreted the import ban to prohibit only semiautomatic rifles that use magazines originally designed for a military rifle.  Many semiautomatic firearms on the market today do not have a military origin but are modeled closely after military firearms.

Hmm, lots of other civilian products have parts originally designed after military good – how about an ordinary sheath knife: should that be under the same kind of ban?

These military-style firearms are not prohibited under the current import ban, even though they are functionally equivalent to prohibited rifles with a military origin.  In addition, the Treasury Department’s 1998 guidance allows foreign-made firearms to be imported into the United States without military features, even though these firearms have the capacity to fire multiple times in quick succession without the need to reload and can easily have military features attached.

As a result of the Treasury Department’s unnecessarily restrictive interpretation of the sporting purposes test, imports of military-style weapons have increased dramatically in recent years, helping to fuel deadly gun violence along the Southwest border and in neighboring Mexico.

Let me be Captain Obvious here: did you, Ms. Diane, EVAH think that some of them (maybe a whole BUNCH of them) actually came from Treasury’s ATF “Fast & Furious” gun give-a-way program?

You know, this example of “DANGER, Will Robinson, DANGER” really isn’t just about guns – it IS all about the hoops that a lot of importers have to work in order to stay true to the law.  Read that again: law abiding citizens.  ALL they are doing is following exactly what you, the Legislators of our Republic, have created.  And now you wish to demonize them simply for doing what you said they should do?

For example, one imported Romanian AK firearm, the WASR-10, was carefully designed to exploit the sporting purposes test and has become a favorite of the gun traffickers that profit by arming Mexican drug trafficking organizations.  The importer of the WASR-10, Century International Arms, circumvents the import ban by taking the following steps:  First, the company imports the inexpensive weapon without any military features, to avoid contravening the ban.  Next, the weapon is disassembled, and American-made parts are added, to make the weapon “American-made,” not “foreign-made.”  The magazine well is also modified to accept higher capacity ammunition magazines.  Finally, assault features — which would be illegal if added to a foreign-made weapon — are added to the now-American-made weapon, rendering the weapon an assault rifle for all practical purposes.  The resulting firearm is then sold on the civilian market, either to be used in violent acts here at home or smuggled across the border into Mexico.

No, they are NOT circumventing anything – they see what is NOT allowed, they see what IS allowed, and then proceed.  And I will re-emphasize: an adjustable or thumbhole stock, normal capacity magazines, a pistol grib, a foregrip – these are cosmetic things that make the weak-kneed among the gungrabbers gasp but do nothing to add to the lethality of the firearm itself.

And even the FBI’s own statistics, Ms. Diane, prove you wrong in violent acts (especially when compared to all types of deaths) – and I go back to the known history that the US Government is guilty of “smuggled across the border into Mexico”. Fix yourself first.

WASR-10s have repeatedly been found in the arsenals of top drug kingpins and their associates.  For example, at least one WASR-10 was used in May 2008 to kill eight police officers in Culiacan, Mexico, a city in the northwestern part of the country.  An analysis conducted by The Center for Public Integrity found that, over the last four years, WASR-10 rifles comprised more than 17% of the firearms recovered at Mexican crime scenes and successfully traced back to the United States.  In all, according to a memorandum by the Council on Foreign Relations published in July 2013, over 70% of the 99,000 weapons recovered by Mexican law enforcement since 2007 were traced to U.S. manufacturers and importers.

And these numbers have been disproven…

We urge ATF to close the loopholes that allow the importation of military-style weapons into the United States.  Such an approach should, at a minimum:

  • Prohibit importation of all semiautomatic rifles that can accept, or be readily converted to accept, a large capacity ammunition magazine of more than 10 rounds, regardless of the military pedigree of the firearm or the configuration of the firearm’s magazine well;

Once again, a NORMAL capacity magazine has been 30 rounds – millions upon millions of ’em over the years.  I bet that 30 rounds make up the vast majority of rifle mags now.  Yes, there are high capacity mags, and drums as well – 100 rounds would be considered high capacity.  30?  Nope – only by those that wish to use the slippery slope to disarmament of the American people.  This has always been a solution to an ideology mantra only.

  • Prohibit semiautomatic rifles with fixed magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds;
  • Prohibit the importation of the frame or receiver of any prohibited rifle, regardless of whether it is incorporated into a fully manufactured firearm;
  • Prohibit the practice of importing assault rifles in parts and then constructing the rifles once they are in the United States by adding the requisite number of American-made parts;
  • Prohibit the use of a “thumbhole” stock as a means to avoid classification of a rifle as an assault rifle; and
  • Prohibit the importation of assault pistols, in addition to assault rifles.

There is no such thing as a civilian assault weapon – to have a selective fire (e.g., fully automatic)  firearm is legal but lots of time, money, and background checks.  But “assault” is a frame of mind of a person to cause harm (or grab guns), not an attribute of a gun itself.

We urge you to review enforcement of the sporting purposes test and take the necessary regulatory steps to stop the importation of all military-style, non-sporting firearms, and the assembly of those firearms from imported parts.  We have endured too many funerals and mourned the loss of too many innocent lives to accept less than full enforcement of the import ban.  Thank you for your attention to this important issue.

I make no claim to be a firearms expert but NO military is going to go to war with just semiautomatic rifles as their mainstay battle rifles.  All of the rifles coming in (“illegally” according this gun grabber) are being used for sporting purposes (or as collector’s items).  And if she were to use stats just from the US, such firearms she complains about would be less than a rounding error of a rounding error for actual use in violent acts.

Tell you what, Senator – I’ll trade you: you can do this for the sake of illegal guns going to Mexico if and ONLY if Mexico will keep their illegal aliens from coming to the US.  Deal?

(H/T: Daily Caller)

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