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?"
You might want to read this.
It is noting like the HellFire device.
The key is the biased position of the trigger. Not allowing the trigger to move from a set position.
He used an SKS and MAC-90 in the above.
If you have an SKS you can do something similar. Squeeze the trigger lightly and slowly. Every once in a while you can get it to fire two or three rounds as his device does. That’s when the trigger is in his bias position. When you do it the recoil will quickly engage the sear so you can only get a couple of shots.
Well, I know recoil was a bad term to use in the cycle of operation, but the recoil of the weapon will move your finger and the trigger stopping the repetitive firing of the weapon.
Yeah, I know. It was a rhetorical question, much to our shame.
The ATF Tech Branch has a group of people who follow the letter of the law and another group that believes that they're working for the government to help prohibit firearms. If you work with the NFA Tech Branch, you never know which one you're going to get. They assign caseloads based upon the requesting citizen's surname initial. You can have a last name beginning in WXYZ and never have a problem, or you can be EFGH and have an examiner assigned to you that practically works for the Brady Campaign. The honest clerks will stamp you through, while others may return your Form 1s and Form 4s for punctuation mistakes when they get around to it some months later.
Ask them once about the legality of an issue, maybe you'll get an answer that may be in your favor. Ask them a second time and you're going to get someone else who will reverse any previous findings. The BATFE has zero problem with some of their examiners making up law as they go along. Even if you get a finding in your favor, it's worth less than the paper it's printed on. One simple stupid question can affect thousands of other Americans.
It's always a good idea never to ask ATF questions about anything if they've already ruled positively.
That said, the ATF Tech Branch is run a thousand times better than it used to be before they moved to West Virginia. Before the move, it almost used to be as bad as being a schoolboy asking the most neurotic mother in your neighborhood for permission to climb the apple tree out in her front yard.
Perhaps you should seek a Constitutional amendment to permit applying a "rational need" basis to the right to keep and bear arms.
I won't support it, of course, because anybody's assessment of my need is irrelevant to the exercise of my rights.
Why was that poor woman who protected her congregation armed only with a handgun? Don't you think she would have been better off with an M-16? What exactly was her need?
It must be spelled a-k-i-n-s.
Best regards,
So basically the trigger moves while the finger stays put, not the finger moves while the trigger stays put...although it's all relative. :)
Right. Akins. Most people think of the diet doctor, like I just did.
Why don’t you just say ‘Nuclear doomsday device that can destroy the whole Solar System’ and be done with it?
If so, then why doesn’t someone pounce on it? Why doesn’t the NRA pounce on it? They have funds for these kinds of things don’t they?
THat’s not an answer to the question.
I’ll tell you what the most logical, most common sense answer to the “how far do we go with this” stupid comment you posted is.
Whatever the plain ordinary army infantry soldier is equipped with is what should be the upper limit to civilian arms ownership.
That means M16s with three round burst.
Anything less than that is a mockery of the second ammendment.
If you have ever “bump fired” a gun, you know how the accelerator works.
If you haven’t bump-fired a gun...
you really should...
http://www.powercustom.com/AKPages/BumpFiring.htm
And not one customer sued the ATF for $1,000 reimbursement plus spring removal expenses in small claims court? After all the product was LEGAL when they bought it.
A 10/22? Sheesh, you're hardly ready to take on The Man with a .22 rifle, even an auto one.
Does this mean that the rubber-band bump fire technique is illegal???
Fortunately, we live in the 21st Century where the adage" when weapons are outlawed, only outlaws will have weapons" is clearly demonstrated in the person of unelected, non-government civilian Osama Bin Laden who seeks and eventually may succeed in acquiring, possessing, transporting and deploying a (or several) nuclear warhead(s).
Whether that meets your test of rational need is not relevant since it is an absolute reality.
The same reality could be applied to H.Ross Perot, George Soros, Bill Gates or any number of other unelected, non-government civilians should they elect to earmark the resources for the project.
All the bluster from all the governments in the world will not alter this reality one iota.
So to make ordinary unelected, non-government civilians into criminals for their desire to acquire, possess, transport and if necessary deploy F-15 fighter jets or howitzers or shoulder fired surface to air missiles or anti-aircraft guns et.al seems misguided at best.
Best regards,
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