Posted on 12/26/2007 8:43:59 AM PST by devane617
HUDSON - It was a simple idea, with big potential.
For years, marksmen have been using a technique called bump firing, shooting a semiautomatic rifle from the hip and allowing the weapon's recoil to pull the trigger.
With federal regulations keeping fully automatic weapons out of their hands, it was one of the few ways for firearm enthusiasts to enjoy the thrill of firing a machine gun.
If there was only a way to simulate that action, Bill Akins wondered, by creating a device that mechanized the recoil resistance to fire more rapid, and accurate, bursts of bullets.
Thus the Akins Accelerator was born.
Akins, 54, is an expert marksman, ex-Marine, Elvis impersonator, seventh-generation Floridian and member of the National Rifle Association.
The Hudson man spent nearly a decade designing his Accelerator. He got a patent for his invention. Then he poured his life savings into marketing and producing it for distribution.
In the era of gun control laws, the device promised to revolutionize target shooting.
"They were selling like hot cakes," Akins said. "We were truly amazed by the response."
That was until the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives banned the Accelerator - two years after approving it.
To the ATF, the mechanism is an illegal converter kit that, in the wrong hands, could turn a run-of the-mill target rifle into a 700-round-per-minute killing machine.
Threatening him with imprisonment, officials ordered Akins to cease production, turn over the recoil springs from his existing stock and hand over his customer list.
And they didn't give him a dime in return.
More than five years later, Akins is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.
His business partner has severed ties with his company. His investors have bailed. He has a warehouse in Oregon filled with more than $750,000 worth of useless stock. His reputation has been sullied by trade publications that once praised his invention.
He can't afford to hire a lawyer to challenge the ATF's ruling.
"They've destroyed my dream," Akins said. "Eleven years of my life, gone like that."
Case Closed, ATF Says
ATF officials stand behind their decision to outlaw the Akins Accelerator.
Drew Wade, an agency spokesman in Washington, said the ATF initially approved the device after test-firing a prototype that Akins sent them in 2003.
Records indicate that the prototype malfunctioned when it was tested and analyzed by a senior technician from the ATF's Firearms Technology Branch, according to Wade. But the agency approved the Accelerator anyway, saying in a letter that it did not meet the criteria for a machine gun and, as a concept, was allowable under federal law.
"FTB has concluded that your submitted device is not designed and intended for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun," ATF officials wrote in a letter dated Aug. 23, 2005.
Wade said the agency reversed its position after someone who bought a fully functioning Accelerator requested another test firing.
This time, Wade said, the mechanism worked.
Shortly after, federal regulators issued a new ruling: The Akins Accelerator is prohibited under the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The stop-production order came in an ATF letter dated Nov. 22, 2006. Besides mailing in all recoil springs in stock and his customer list, the agency demanded that Akins send an affidavit to each customer to account for all the devices sold. The recipients had to sign the document and return it to the ATF with the removed springs.
Wade would not comment on Akins' contention that the ATF erred in its decision-making.
"That's the bottom line is that we believe it's a machine gun," the spokesman said. "End of story."
Reversal Of Fortunes
Akins questions that rationale.
He cites sections of the 1968 gun control act that define a machine gun as any "weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger."
"That's not what the Akins Accelerator does," he said. "It isn't a gun. It isn't a machine gun. It's an accessory; that's all it is. These guys are making it up as they go along."
Officials from the NRA and the National Sports Shooting Association, chief advocates for gun ownership in the country, were not willing to comment on Akins' dilemma.
"We just don't know enough about it," said Ted Novin, the shooting association's president.
Before he patented the Accelerator, Akins did his homework.
He consulted lawyers such as James H. Jeffries III, who represented the NRA in high-profile lawsuits against the federal government, and sought a legal opinion from the ATF's Firearms Technology Branch.
They all thought his device was permissible under federal law.
"I wouldn't have invested millions of dollars on this if I knew it wasn't legal," Akins said.
Bringing his product to the marketplace, he established Akins Group Inc., took out bank loans and a second mortgage on his home to fund production, and began advertising in Shotgun News and other firearms publications.
The Accelerators, made of injection molded plastic, sold for about $1,000 apiece. They came in a small box with tools and instructions on how to attach the device to a semiautomatic rifle.
Buzz Spread Online
Similar to a Hellfire - which attaches to the trigger guard and already is on the market - the Accelerator was based on the practice of bump firing.
Once the trigger is pulled, the Accelerator's spring mechanism takes over and the trigger reciprocates at high speed, using recoil resistance to imitate automatic fire.
Most of the Accelerators were made for a Ruger 10/22, but Akins intended to make them for other rifles.
Overnight, the buzz about the Accelerator spread across the Internet.
"This thing is cool," one buyer gushed in a sporting chat room. "I can't believe it's legal."
But in 2006, several months after full production began, the ATF reversed its original ruling, outlawing the device and leaving Akins with a worthless product.
Akins wrote to the ATF, asking for clarification.
What followed was a flurry of vague and often contradictory correspondence that never fully explained why the federal regulators changed their position, Akins said.
"I wanted to explode," he recalled. "I started calling everyone I know, looking for help."
The NRA understood his dilemma, a spokesman told him, but didn't have a dog in the fight.
Akins turned to several pro-gun Republicans in Congress. Staff members promised someone would look into it.
"They said they couldn't do anything," Akins said. "Their hands are tied."
At the very least, he hoped to recover some of the money - his own and investors' - which he estimates at several million dollars.
"I don't understand how the federal government could come into my life like this, destroy my business and not offer compensation," Akins said.
"We did everything by the books."
Feeling Shaken And Stirred
The man behind the Akins Accelerator has toured the country impersonating Elvis onstage. He and his wife, Jeannie, live in a modest home on 2 acres along a winding road, in a rural corner of west Pasco County where you still can see the stars at night.
"I haven't made a lot of money over the years," Akins said. "But I've done all right for myself."
He considers himself a patriot and a rugged individualist in the Jeffersonian tradition.
He is an unflinching defender of the Second Amendment and a 30-year member of the NRA who learned to appreciate guns as a kid hunting rabbits in rural Florida.
He joined the Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War.
He has voted Republican his entire life, twice for George W. Bush.
And he loves his country.
"I was brought up to believe in America, in the principles of right and wrong," Akins said. "My boyhood heroes were John Wayne and Roy Rogers. I was a child of the 1950s."
That's why his ongoing feud with the federal government and the lack of backup for his cause have shaken him to the core.
He cites the Ruby Ridge shootings and the Branch Davidian siege by ATF agents in Waco, Texas, as examples of how the government crushes dissent.
He wonders if they will come for him, too.
"They're a bunch of jack-booted thugs," he fumed. "I wouldn't put it past them."
He also said he feels betrayed by the pro-gun lobby.
A few weeks ago, the NRA sent him a membership renewal. Akins stared at the one-page letter for a while. He sighed.
"I couldn't bring myself to renew it," he said. "What's the point, right?"
Actually it doesn't. An 'automatic' weapon is legally defined as one that fires more than one cartridge with a single trigger pull.
This device merely speeds the number of times one can pull the trigger in a given time period. The trigger must still be pulled to fire each round.
Therefore this device is perfectly legal.
L
Why Lobby? They work for us remember????? Why is it some people support the notion We The People must pay some high priced lawyers huge sums of money for years on end to have a voice in government especially in THE PEOPLES HOUSE? Why should a lobyiest have any more access or higher standing with my congressman than me? The way to stop it is by group actions if necessary at the congress-critters very doors. Not wining and dining him and his lawyer buddies and paying them to go entertain themselves.
If enough people got on the phones and hit the streets today abortion in the United States would be unlawful by the upcoming State of the Union address. That is how to get things done.
I will not count on the likes of the NRA or anyone to defend my rights as most of these orgs are simply money intake machines for lawyers and executive salaries.
This nation has been dumbed down to the point where we are sheep being led to the slaughter and paying the salaries of the ones leading us there.
The simplest rule would suffice: whatever small arms or long arms that an infantryman might carry into battle ought to be legal and available to all free citizens. (Grenades and shoulder-launches missiles are not "arms", they are munitions.) If any 18 year old grunt can be trusted to carry it, why can't an older pipe-fitter or librarian with no records of violence or mental incapacity? Are we equal in the eyes of the law, or not?
I consider it anything man-portable, which includes a lot more than just a 3-round burst M-16.
No problem here, I left the NRA compromisers a long time ago.
I send my money to the GOA. The NRA is just another conductor on the slow train to socialism.
Sui
Why would the NRA get involved with a device that clearly makes a semiautomatic into something fully automatic?
Why should my dues go to your viewpoint?
How much money are you going to send to the inventor of this fully automatic device?
LOL! You sound just like many of the elitist shot-gunners I know who cant understand why anyone would want of need a nasty semi-auto. TAfter all, they serve no sporting purpose.
Either you understand and support ALL the gun rights or you are part of the problem. The NRA has become part of the problem. When it comes to politics and policy, selecting ala carte is a loser.
You better hope you never find yourself at the mercy of some government functionary who decides to decide for himself that you've violated the 'intent' of some law.
L
B urn
All
Toddlers
First
The other stuff should probably have more restrictions. Belt fed machineguns, claymore mines, gatling guns, mortars, grenades, etc...these things I think should require special licenses...like they currently do for short barreled rifles and suppressors(in some states). Maybe with even more restrictions.
Be that as it may but I know of the NRA and what they do and stand for. What ever you belong to is virtually unheard of. Let’s see who pulls the most clout.
The Founding Fathers never gave ‘arms’ a meaning. As far as I’m concerned, I could own an M4A1 with M203 slung underneath, with a couple of 203 frag rounds.
But the rest of government doesn’t know what ‘arms’ means.
The rifles are only semi-automatic and require a pull of the trigger for each shot fired. This device does not change this. It only allowed the stock to act as a cradle to allow the action to slide back from the recoil and then to bounce back forward until the trigger hits your finger again thus firing another round. Under this ruling, the ATF can call any semi-auto a machine gun in that you can rapid fire by repeatedly pulling the trigger or by “bump-firing” which is nothing more than holding it loosly to allow the gun to bounce to the rear and then back to the front. This guy consulted with the ATF up front and received a letter stating that the rifle was still only semi-auto and that it was legal since only one round was fired for each activation of the trigger. They changed the rules after the fact and should have to reimberse him for his loss.
In some states, you currently can, minus the grenade launcher though.
Hillary Clinton has a lot of clout, but I'm sure as hell not voting for her.
I was an NRA member for many years until the early 90s when I figured out the NRA was not working in our best interest. They would rather compromise than fight for principle.
To be sure, a whole lot of sheeple provide the NRA with clout. The same clout that brought us the Brady bill and virtually every other REASONABLE federal gun law in the past 30 years.
Groups like the GOA and JPFO may not be nearly as large as the NRA, but if you've never heard of them then its obvious you really don't know much about the 2nd Amendment.
Sui
Okay, you win, I’m an idiot and you know everything. feel better now.
Me too.
Best regards,
I can tell you right now what the NRA has done in the last couple of weeks.
Absolutely, they have been busy,busy,busy fixing things that were not broken until they are ruined beyond repair--a policy the NRA has had for over half a century.
America's oldest gun control organization by any other name would stink as much.
Possibly why 76 million American gunowners and 15 million American Hunters DO NOT BELONG to the NRA.
It might even be more accurate to say the VAST OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of American Gunowners DO NOT AGREE with the NRA.
A few excerpts from then and now:
http://www.duke.edu/~mms16/Singeron_NRA_w_Chart.pdf.
The NRA gradually began to play an active role in efforts by the federal government to regulate firearms.
In the 1930s Congress passed three main gun control acts. The Uniform Firearms Act of 1930 forbade the delivery of pistols to "convicts, drug addicts, habitual drunkards, incompetents, and minors under the age of 18."
Karl T. Frederick, then president of the NRA, served as a special consultant in the framing of this act.
The NRA also supported the National Firearms Act of 1934, which taxed and required registration of such firearms as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns, although some controversy existed surrounding Congress's definition of a machine gun.
Finally, the NRA supported the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which imposed regulations on interstate and foreign commerce in firearms and pistol ammunition and restricted the use of sawed-off shotguns and machine guns.
*************************************************
Congressional hearings over the National Firearms Act of 1934 (H.R.9066) took place April 16 & 18 and May 14, 15, & 16 of 1934.
Then-NRA President Karl T. Frederick testified on behalf of the National Rifle Association (NRA). His testimony is below and includes the text in full plus scanned images of each page.
MR. FREDERICK: ... "I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I seldom carry one. ... I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses"
Link:
http://www.keepandbeararms.com/NRA/NFA.asp
***********************************************************
From: Cox, Christopher
Date: Apr 27, 2007 4:09 PM Subject: NRA Statement & Fact Sheet
*NRA STATEMENT ON LEGISLATIVE EFFORTS ON CAPITOL HILL*
Recent reports in the Washington Post, Newsweek and other media outlets are fanning Internet rumors regarding the NRA's position concerning legislation currently being discussed in Congress in the aftermath of the horrific crimes that occurred at Virginia Tech.
The NRA has a long history of supporting measures to keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals and those who have been adjudicated by a court as mentally incompetent, and we will continue to do so.
Including necessary records on prohibited persons into the NICS is a position we have long supported.
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