National Alliance of Stocking Gun Dealers - The Sellout

Department of the Treasury under Robert Rubin ^ | Robert Rubin

[FSPress]

If a regulatory agency wants to get results, it needs cooperation from the industry it regulates. Some gun dealers told us that in the past, there was a wall between legitimate gun dealers and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). In 1993, the new chief of the Firearms Regulatory Division phoned the executive director of a key association of gun store owners. When he sugges-ted they talk about industry/regulatory problems, the association executive was astonished. This was a whole new ball game. They began talking -- exchanging information, airing their differences, and building a new relationship. This year, the National Alliance of Stocking Gun Dealers recognized ATF's leadership with an award for forging this new partnership with legitimate gun dealers.

This is just one example of ATF's new approach in working with gun dealers, importers, and manufacturers. The industry has profited by becoming part of the process under which they're regulated. ATF now gets better industry cooperation than before. State and local police get help in solving violent crimes as ATF, gun manufacturers, and distributors work with them. We have learned that when you trust those you regulate to do the right thing and work with them, the result is increased cooperation and better compliance with the law.

[FSPress]

Do a search on National Alliance of Stocking Gun Dealers and learn what they are doing. Ask your local gun store if they are a member and ask to see the NASGD monthly THE ALLIANCE and see if you like what you see. If you wonder why the number of FFLs dropped so rapidly under Clinton you need look at how the NASGD aided and benfitted from the reduction. Want to know who hates gun shows and helps groups like VPC go after gun shows - NASGD

KNOW YOUR ENEMY

[FSPress]

BANG

[backhoe]

Just off the top of my head, FFL numbers declined 75% during the clintons corrupt reign.

[FSPress]

The NASGD appears to have worked actively to get rid of the FFLs who do not operate out a store. They use words like kitchen table dealers to label those FFLs. They want to get rid of the competition by using the government to crack down on the small FFLs and getting heavier regulation of gun shows. Before GCA 1968 you could order your gun through the mail, or through the Sears and Roebuck catalog, now you have to go to an FFL. The NASGD members have a monopoly on the business and want to eliminate competition of private, legal sales and small FFLs.

[backhoe]

The NASGD members have a monopoly on the business and want to eliminate competition of private, legal sales and small FFLs

That's my take on it, too-- from 1983 until 2002, I held a FFL with an NFA endorsement- dropped it because of the expense, liability, and hassle.

There was a great, largely internal debate among the firearms industry whether "kitchen table dealers" actually hurt or helped more mainstream stores.

After most were driven out of business ( and no, I was not one of them- had a standalone building ) some groups conceeded that this move really hurt everyone, overall- but it was too late to correct it.

Here's one group that tried to save the kitchen table dealers:

Amfire.com website is run by the largest and oldest firearms ...
Amfire.com website is run by the largest and oldest firearms retailer Associations in America: The Professional Gun Retailers Association,and the National ...
Description: American Firearms Industry is the Official Journal for the National Association of Federally Licensed...
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NewJour Home | NewJour: A | Search [Prev] [Next] American Firearms
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Reprinted from American Firearms Industry Magazine January 1996.
Reprinted from American Firearms Industry Magazine January 1996. Dealer
prices in this article have been removed by webmaster. Are ...
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[FSPress]

AFI has some good information on their site. The most amazing information to me is on the Statistics page. Look at the Homicide Rates 1900 to 1990. Following the GCA of 68, homicide rates kept going up to very high levels. People are very concerned about who can legally buy guns, felons for example, yet these numbers don't show that it makes a difference who is allowed to buy. That would make an interesting topic for someone like Lott to look at.

[backhoe]

AFI has some good information on their site. The most amazing information to me is on the Statistics page. Look at the Homicide Rates 1900 to 1990. Following the GCA of 68, homicide rates kept going up to very high levels.

Yes, indeed... a minor note- the editor, Andy ???- can't recall his last name- was a classic Democrat, Union family, professional lobbyist, yet his political advice was always a breath of fresh air. Pity more people didn't read, and heed, it.

[William Terrell]

The whole article.

---

Archive

Department of the Treasury

Robert Rubin, Secretary

Mission Statement

The mission of the Department of the Treasury is to formulate and recommend economic, fiscal, and tax policies; serve as the financial agent of the government; enforce the law; protect the President and other officials; and manufacture coins and currency. Treasury's functions are broad and critical to the nation's well-being and include the following:

• Serve as the President's principal advisor in formulating international monetary, financial, and trade policies.
• Develop policies that consider economic effects of tax and budget policy.
• Regulate national banks, the government securities markets, and federal- and state-chartered thrifts.
• Sell securities needed to finance the federal government, and report on the government's financial condition.
• Collect the proper amount of income tax revenue at the least cost to the public and with the highest degree of public confidence.
• Collect revenue from imports and excise taxes on alcoholic beverages and tobacco products.
• Improve government-wide financial management.
• Disburse payments to over 100-million citizens annually.
• Enforce laws related to:
  • smuggling drugs and contraband;
  • trade, tax, and financial institution and telecommunications fraud;
  • exports of high technology and munitions;
  • counterfeiting and money laundering;
  • alcohol, tobacco, firearms, explosives, and violent crimes; and
  • the protection of the President, Vice President and others.
• Train law enforcement officers.
• Manufacture currency, coins, and stamps for the nation's commerce.

Summary Budget Information

FY 1993 (Actual)		FY 1996 (Budgeted)
Budget	Staff	Budget	Staff
$10.131 billion	161,100	$10.402 billion	153,319

Reinvention Highlights

For over two hundred years, the Treasury Department has been a symbol of stability for the federal government and the nation. But being an old-line agency does not mean we are not open to new ideas. In the last three years, we have taken a hard look at some of our traditional ways of doing things and have begun reinventing Treasury. We are using new approaches and new technology to work more efficiently and serve the public better. We are handling monetary transactions electronically, reducing our regulations, and treating the businesses we regulate as partners. And we are doing these things with fewer people. In 1993, our baseline employment was 161,100 compared to about 153,000 today, a decrease of nearly 8,000 employees in three years. Our budget has stayed basically at the same level -- $10 billion in 1993, $10 billion in 1996. Taking into account the effects of inflation, our budget has dropped. We are now doing more with less.

Handling Our Money Electronically. Whether it is collecting taxes and import duties or making federal payments, Treasury has the world's largest cash flow -- about $3 trillion annually. Until recently, most of the 840-million federal checks going out each year, and the over 200-million tax returns coming in, were paper instead of electronic or wire transactions. Handling all this paper costs more, takes longer, and is not as reliable or secure as doing it electronically. We are bringing the nation's financial management into the information age -- in both collecting money and paying it out.

Taxpayers with simple tax returns are now able to file electronically by phone; about three-million people filed their 1995 returns this way. This year,
instead of making a trip to the public library or Internal Revenue Service office to get tax forms, taxpayers were able to download forms instantly through the on the World Wide Web. Over 100,000 files were downloaded on just one day -- April 15. The next step will be to let taxpayers with home computers file their returns directly via their computer modem -- and we are working on that.

We are cutting business taxpayers' paperwork as we switch to electronic tax collection. For more than 40 years employers deposited their federal withholding and employment taxes sending a special form and check to their bank. A 1995 law required a small number of employers (1,500) to start making their deposits electronically, but more than 64,000 employers -- depositing over $300 billion -- have voluntarily joined the program as of June 1996.

Our Financial Management Service is also delivering 425-million payments valued at nearly $700 billion electronically this year. This represents over half its total payment transaction volume and nearly 70 percent of its total dollar volume. Electronic payments are faster, safer, more reliable, and cheaper. An electronic payment costs 2 cents, but cutting and sending a check costs 45 cents (not including the costs to agencies and the banking industy of handling lost, stolen, or forged checks). We expect this to save the government about $500 million over the next five years, and the banking industry estimates it will save almost $400 million each year.

Starting in July 1996, people or businesses receiving new payments from the federal government who have bank accounts will be required to have their payments deposited electronically into those accounts. By January 1, 1999, we are required by law to deliver all payments, except tax refunds, electronically. This includes having in place a convenient, low-cost way to get payments to people who do not have a bank account. To that end, we have been experimenting for the past seven years with giving nearly 30,000 people a plastic card for their benefit payments, which they can use to get their money from an automated teller machine or point-of-sale terminal. We have also begun to deliver tax refunds electronically, even though this will not be required by law.

Regulatory Partners, Not Adversaries. Treasury investigates crimes and enforces laws and regulations involving firearms and explosives, money laundering, counterfeiting, banks, trade, and taxes. As regulators, we are cutting down on our regulations. We are changing our approach by taking a position of trusting those we regulate to do the right thing and by treating them as honest citizens and business people who do want to comply with the law.

To protect people's bank deposits, Treasury regulates national banks and thrift savings institutions to see that their operations are safe and sound. In the past three years, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Comptroller of the Currency reinvented their approach to supervising thrifts and banks. For example, officials of the Office of Thrift Supervision personally met with numerous people in the thrift industry to get their perspective. Acting on the feedback they received in these meetings, they cut out 40 percent of the paperwork required in the thrifts' quarterly reports and agreed to do a better job in coordinating their examinations. They canceled useless regulations and overhauled 70 percent of the remaining regulations by reviewing, reorganizing, and rewriting them in plain English. The Comptroller of the Currency did the same with all its bank regulations from A to Z. In fact, last year all Treasury bureaus with regulatory responsibilities set goals to eli-minate regulations. Treasury's total target was to eliminate 500 pages of regulations. As of June 30, we had cut out nearly 400 pages of rules.

If a regulatory agency wants to get results, it needs cooperation from the industry it regulates. Some gun dealers told us that in the past, there was a wall between legitimate gun dealers and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). In 1993, the new chief of the Firearms Regulatory Division phoned the executive director of a key association of gun store owners. When he sugges-ted they talk about industry/regulatory problems, the association executive was astonished. This was a whole new ball game. They began talking -- exchanging information, airing their differences, and building a new relationship. This year, the National Alliance of Stocking Gun Dealers recognized ATF's leadership with an award for forging this new partnership with legitimate gun dealers.

This is just one example of ATF's new approach in working with gun dealers, importers, and manufacturers. The industry has profited by becoming part of the process under which they're regulated. ATF now gets better industry cooperation than before. State and local police get help in solving violent crimes as ATF, gun manufacturers, and distributors work with them. We have learned that when you trust those you regulate to do the right thing and work with them, the result is increased cooperation and better compliance with the law.

Doing More With Less. We are doing all these things with a workforce that is significantly smaller than it was in 1993 -- we have cut our numbers from about 161,000 to just over 153,000 -- a reduction of nearly 8,000 employees. At the same time we cut staffing, we have become more productive and done more with less. For example, when we introduced the redesigned $100 bill this past spring (to stay ahead of advances in counterfeiting technology), we did not have to set up a big bureaucracy to do it. A core team of five people, working with an outside contractor and several other federal agencies, designed a worldwide education campaign to make sure people in all countries around the world recognized and accepted our new currency. Our $100 note is the most widely circulated bill in the world. When the new currency came out, it happened without a hitch. There were no problems with people rushing to trade in their old bills for new ones or to exchange their U.S. currency for another country's currency. This successful story is just one example of how we have used minimum resources to get maximum benefit.

Treasury is reinventing the way we do things because we want government to serve the people, not the other way around. We are trying to use good judgment and common sense in dealing with those we regulate, and we are cutting back on the number of our regulations. We are trying new ways to be more efficient and save the taxpayers money. We are doing more with less. The bottom line is that reinventing Treasury is about dollars and common sense.

[PatrioticAmerican]

Sleeping with the enemy always makes for a messy divorce.

[white trash redneck]

A reprehensible example of a group conniving with the state to eliminate its competition.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[sig226]

I work for an FFL, selling all kinds of firearms 50 or so hours a week. You may know that the profit margin is next to nothing. What really kills the industry - the businesses that exist to make a profit - is internet and living room FFL's who exist solely because the FFL holder is too stupid to realize that earning a $50.00 profit on a gun that he bought wholesale for $950.00 is a loss.

The typical firearm markup is 15 - 20%. Try to run a businees on that, when your customers often treat your $100,000 inventory as though it was a showroom for them to play with a rifle, then they can go buy it from some pinhead for fifty bucks over cost, because the pinhead actually thinks he's making money.

To all the pinheads out there - try placing a $10,000 stocking order with Kimber, and a $50,000 stocking order with Remington, then you can show them the gun they want instead of making me do it.

While you're at it, learn how to disassemble the things and clean them, so I don't have to tell your customers how to do it. After all, there's money in it for you: Fifty bucks.

While you're at it, why don't you employ somebody at your "business," and try paying rent and collecting sales tax?

I have no problem with entrepeneurs. Its dimwitted hobbyists that don't understand the damage their fifty dollar profit is doing to the real industry that make me puke.

And if you sympathize with the hobbyist FFL holder, remember how much you liked him when all the local shops are out of business and you can buy whatever crap is on sale at Wal Mart, if the kiddies there can remember how to fill out the form.

[hoosierskypilot]

Sorry, it's whatever the market will bear. But, speaking of what the future holds, I've seen it. I live in California and have seen merchandise eliminated for no other reason than gunowners too stupid or too lazy to vote the whores out of office.

Back when I still lived in a civilized state, I collected older (pinned) Smith revolvers. Here in Satan's domain (CA), people are too stupid to shoot a Smith wheelgun without blowing off their toes. (That's my guess, since there is no safety flaw in Smith revolvers, at all.)

So the low life, scum dwelling demonRats that run the state (from Sacramento: there's a real joke of a city) decided you can't buy the venerable Smith wheelgun with the pinned barrel.

I sympathize with you. I've done business with these "gun dealers" who operate out of the trunk of their car. I don't mind paying a bit more for a firearm from my neighborhood dealer, simply because he'll be around long after the hobbyist decides to try his hand at selling CB radios.

(And that will probably be just after his taco truck fails.)

[philetus]

Did you know this?

[Blue Collar Christian]

I run a motorcyle accessory and repair, and can't agree more with what kind of damage these types of people do to the business until they run out of money. I'm all for competing with the people who have overhead.

And the point about getting your stuff at Wal Mart, they can't sell guns in California right now, and they have never even sold ammunition at the Panorama City Wallyworld since it opened here in the San Fernando Valley. Meanwhile, the good old gun shops like B&B Sales, Pony Express, etc. are gone now.

I must agree, though, with others in this thread that aiding the government in closing down the small FFL is bordering on traitorous.