Every protagonist in Greek tragedy is expected to have some fatal or tragic flaw. A weakness that compels toward their demise. If the ATF ever had a higher purpose, its modern obsession with control over a constitutionally protected right, at least in the current court climate, could be their undoing.
Anti-2A wins have been few and far between, but the progressives are nothing if not persistent. As our new tagline states (or will when we complete the next site rebuild), Tyranny never rests, so neither shall we. And you can’t have a proper despotism while the people retain not just the right to self-defense but an ability to meet or even counter the State’s force advantage.
They will not rest until they have the guns.
With that mission statement in mind last year, ATF issued a complex and convoluted pistol brace rule in its latest effort to bureaucratize the Second Amendment into a maze that is impossible to navigate. The rule got a lot of attention on our pages but has since been stayed pending a handful of legal challenges over which ATF has not fared well. In a last-ditch effort to save their Rube-Golbergian masterpiece, ATF now insists that if you evade or ignore the rule, you are evading taxes (or something), and you can’t sue them for that.
My best guess is that they are convinced this will end up at the US Supreme Court, and Chief Justice Roberts will roll over on the tax issue the way he did with Obamacare. But it is a risky bet. If the courts are forced to decide the question of ATF’s capacity to generate revenue on an enumerated and protected natural right, the result could be the partial or total loss of that ability, which could have nationwide implications.
Liberal states have long used fees (taxes) to inhibit the exercise of the right to self-defense.
No one bringing lawsuits is challenging the National Firearms Act’s empowerment of ATF to collect these taxes, so that may be why ATF is throwing the Hail Mary. It is little more than an argument for the defense, so it seems unlikely to go much further than that, but it does appear that ATF has run out of excuses.
