[Copernicus]

Here is the status of the War on Guns as described by the Government itself.

Freepers may wish to meditate on the notion that there are approximately 104 thousand individuals who stand between liberty and tyranny.

How has it come to this in just one generation?

You may wish to "stock up before the hoarders arrive". (Old depression era joke)

Best regards to all

[PGalt]

BUMP!

[Copernicus]

Greetings!

You might find this report to be of some interest.

Best regards,

[basil]

I won't be surprised to wake up one day to learn that only the ATF can sell guns.

[MindBender26]

>DROPPED FROM 284,117 IN 1992 TO 103,942 IN 1999. OF THESE 80,570 ARE RETAIL DEALERS OR PAWNBROKERS.

With all respect, this is an extremely foolish post. It only helps the anti-gunners.

Federal Firearms Licenses have nothing to do with possession, shooting, carry, etc. FFL holders are firearms dealers, either in the traditional retail trade or pawnbrokers who have reason to sell firearms that were pawned but not redeemed.

Only real question here is, why are there 103,942 FFLs out there when only 80,570 are dealers in either the retail or secondary markets?

Quite frankly, with America under a domestic assault, when we are being overrun with illegal immigrants, when there are undoubtedly Muslim extremists moving in through our open borders, when we know there are Muslim extremist cells here already, I'm glad they do not give just anyone the ability to sell firearms at the retail level.

That's all we need. Some wacko Islamic funneling guns to his radical brethren, and doing it with the advantages of having a FFL under the color of law.

[DocH]

Don't know about this report, but I was on the BatFag site the other day to check some regs, and checked out their "History" page.

It appears to conveniently leave out the ENTIRE 1990's. Could it be they're ashamed of instigating the bogus raid with the falsified search warrant, that led to the unwarranted conflagration that killed great numbers of innocent men, women, and children?

That couldn't possible be the reason the 90's were left out, could it?

[rbookward]

Somebody (a president, most likely) needs to give the bureaucracy an attitude adjustment.

Its mission should be DEFENDING the 2A, not infringing it!

Imagine if they were given the mission of helping arms dealers set up their business, and helping them understand and comply with the law, and helping them find and access supplies of arms and ammo, and...you get the idea.

Instead we have some power-hungry, authority-grabbing, turf-expanding bureaucracy. Which is, of course, the natural state for such things.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Giuliani's fault < /S >

[omnivore]

This is evidence of great evil concentrated in BATFE.

America should measure and celebrate its level of freedom and patriotism by how many gun dealers and gun traders it has!

To have the number of gun dealers be in any way be interpreted as a measure of something bad, rather than something good, rather than something to be proud of, is to buy into the propaganda spewed by the enemies of the American way of life. Which includes BATFE.

How can we get any of the Repub presidential candidates to propose zero-funding BATFE? Completely eliminating it from the federal budget, on the grounds that it is an agency which has been captured by enemies of America, and is completely beyond redemption. Because it is.

There's an easy way to save the taxpayers a bundle of money, and to fight against a stronghold of anti-American terrorism at the same time. Eliminate BATFE completely. Eradicate it from its pitiful bureaucratic existence. Zero-fund it. The founding fathers could never have imagined it ever existing in the first place. It is a nightmare of 20th Century Statism, an abomination in an otherwise relatively free America. It's time for BATFE to be eradicated. There is no place for BATFE to exist in 21st century America.

[Joe Brower]

[Robert A Cook PE]

But those were the Clintons' years of power.

Do you really think that the ATF (whop were VIGOROUSLY!) and FBI (who were VICIOUSLY!) were investigating Muslim terrorists when the HEAD of the internal terrorism task force said his biggest worry (before Y2K, but while AQ and OBL were planning and beginning the WTC bombings) was "right wing churches who hid terrorists" ......

[mysterio]

The ATF should be defunded immediately. Vote Ron Paul.

[Cloud William]

This is simply a condensed report of what BATF(E) accomplished during the Clinton years. I had several friends who had FFLs - mostly because they liked to buy new hardware at dealer prices, and often ammo was available to FFL holders at lower prices, too. As part of Bubba's war on gun owners (who evidently were seen as a greater threat than Osama bin Laden), BATF enacted measures to get these "hobbyist" FFL holders to surrender their licences.

Mind you, *before* Clinton was elected, most of these thousands of FFL holders only occasionally sold a gun to a friend or relative, or at a gun show. Most of what they bought went into their private collections. After Waco, though, the interest in guns jumped off the scale. "Kitchen table" gun dealers found that they could sell SKS carbines cheaper than the average rimfire.

The flood of those rifles (in various configurations as BATF changed the regs re: bayonets, etc.), together with other affordable, effective rifles (e.g., the various AK configurations) was giving the Clinton administration serious heartburn. One crackpot even emptied the magazine of one such rifle at the White House, remember? BATF reacted to the threat by trying to limit the number of people who could sell guns. Their first maneuver was to raise the licence renewal fee, then when that didn't reduce the number of licensees as they'd hoped, they came up with the regulations requiring "storefront" business locations. The average hobbyist FFL holder was, at that point, pretty much out of luck.

BATFE had made it more difficult and expensive to be a licensed gun dealer, but it's certainly not impossible. Also, not all of the FFL holders that BATFE chased away during the '90s quit selling guns at gun shows - many bought guns themselves and conducted legal private sales. They sold fewer and made less money, but they did it anyway, just to poke BATFE in the eye.

You can bet that eventually, the government will close the loop on private sales. That's what all of this has been leading up to.

[traviskicks]

Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.

[verity]

The proximate cause of your frustration is the Legislative Branch of Government from which laws emanate.

[TYVets]

the number of Federal firearms licensees DROPPED FROM 284,117 IN 1992 TO 103,942 IN 1999,

Just another part of THE LEGACY OF THE CLINTON'S.

The Co-Presidents want control, not just gun control.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Tolkien]

None Dare Call it Treason.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!