I picture Merrick Garland rousing from a restless sleep, donning his Obama slippers and a pilly white cotton robe, before scurrying to his lair. You can hear distant, muffled screaming as he walks, clinging bitterly to the remnants of the dream he’s just had.
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A new way to disarm law-abiding citizens or, at least, make the exercise of Second Amendment rights more burdensome. That is, after all, what a Democrat attorney general is supposed to do.
Garland makes his way to his desk, where he quickly downs two fingers of scotch forgotten from earlier. His chair creaks when he sits, his hands illuminated by a pool of lamplight paw for a Pall Mall Mentholated cigarette, which he sticks to his chapped bottom lip.
A Sphynx cat listens to the scratching of a pencil on paper from a dark corner, its eyes reflecting the scant light from its gloomy perch.
Suddenly, a cackle echoes down the hall as lightning strikes and thunder booms. It’s Alive! Alive!
What’s alive? Merrick Garland is reimaging portions of the Gun Control Act that would require vast numbers of gun owners to pay the ATF for a firearms dealer’s license or face the consequences.
The new rule purports to narrow the term “personal collection,” which Congress did not limit, to “personal firearms that a person accumulates for study, comparison, exhibition, or for a hobby.” Somehow “self-defense” didn’t make the cut, although that’s a predominant reason to acquire firearms. …
The rule adds that the term “personal collection” “shall not include any firearm purchased for the purpose of resale or made with the predominant intent to earn a profit.” But collectors in general buy guns with the purpose of eventual resale when they locate and can afford guns of ever-higher quality and rarity, and they certainly intend to sell guns for more than they paid as the collection moves up the ladder. And any gun owner would hope that the value of his or her firearms will increase in value, even if only to be sold by the heirs at a profit. …
The new rule is calculated to require potentially hundreds of thousands of gun owners who occasionally buy and sell firearms to obtain dealer licenses from ATF.
The new rules would also expand the ATF’s power to seize firearms based on the presumption or potential intent. “A single firearm need not even be sold if the person expresses a willingness to sell firearms, even if the person has no firearms to sell. That’s not how Congress defined the terms.”
You post a picture of a firearm on social media, and guess what? ATF could decide you intended to sell it and introduce you to their 5 AM raid program (hide your dog).
ATF can supposedly seize and forfeit firearms based on “presumptions” it invented and is not limited to the grounds for forfeiture set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 924(d), which for many forfeitures requires a showing of intent “by clear and convincing evidence”—the opposite of a presumed violation.
Stephen Halbrook, writing at Reason.com, has a lot more background and foreground here, but the long and short of it is this. Merrick Garland, DoJ, and ATF, whose jobs are to enforce laws, not make them, are penning rules that create crimes they can then use to enrich the Government at the expense of your rights (property and self-defense).
These suggested rules have little chance of surviving even the thinnest scrutiny, but that’s not the point. The point is to try. To try everything, overwhelm the system, and build on whatever they can sneak by or learn from their failed attempt. They will take your hand. The Left wants to disarm law-abiding citizens and will do anything to accomplish that task, evening the shadow of Bruen.
Americans should respond to the news … by buying more guns.
HT | Reason