Firearms Friday: Green Is The New Black

When it comes to firearms the federal government is very concerned with color. It seems as though they are obsessed with how something looks rather than taking a closer look at what it actually is. The most prevalent obsession is about black rifles in which they clump together all kinds of firearms, attribute fantastical powers to them, and don’t bother looking at the actual functionality of the various semi-automatic platforms. This is an ongoing problem that continues to bother many of us as the claims made are false and the solution that these “lawmakers” have is to strip away the rights from everyone.

Now many politicians are focusing on a different color… green. And I am not referring to environmental issues. They are determined to prohibit the sale of green tip ammunition which, not so coincidentally, is used primarily in the AR15 (“black rifle”) platform. The increased popularity of the AR pistol platform seems to have provided the impetus for the ATF’s proposed ban just as it did for the recent opinion released by the ATF that the Sig Brace can no longer be shouldered. In reality, anyone who thinks that an AR pistol can be concealed as a handgun has never bothered to consider the facts in that scenario. However, there is huge hole in the ‘logic’ behind this proposal as was outlined by Robert Farago on TheTruthAboutGuns.org:

“Mark Glaze [Executive Director of Every Town For Gun Safety] wants American gun owners to use ammunition that doesn’t pierce the “bulletproof” vests of police officers, but the fact of the matter is that any commercially available 5.56 ammunition will do that same job. The vests worn by cops simply aren’t designed to stop rifle rounds… Nor is there any ammunition in the intermediate or large rifle caliber range that will fail to penetrate a Level IIA vest. .308 Winchester? .30-06 Springfield? 7.62×39? All of these calibers will pass straight through a “bulletproof” vest, no matter what kind of projectile is used — “armor piercing” or not.”

Yes, this is the same Mark Glaze that made the following confession last year to The Wall Street Journal shortly after resigning as the executive director of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns: “Mr. Glaze said the movement hasn’t solved one of its signature problems: Many mass shootings wouldn’t have been stopped by tighter regulations proposed by gun-control advocates, even if they might have prevented other gun crimes.”

The ATF’s proposal really isn’t about the banning of a popular surplus ammunition, this is the back end work that continues to happen in order to limit the availability of ammunition for this platform. While it may be seen as a leap in logic for some to see this as an affront to our rights, when looking at the larger picture the common motivation is quite clear... they are trying out flank the banning of the AR platform since their direct assault failed. And, as Glaze has previously admitted, any legislation that does pass will not satiate the emotional fervor that they, and other similar groups, have instilled in many people. These types of policies just don’t work!

Firearms Friday: SNAFU

When Sig Sauer originally started producing the Sig Brace they insisted that reviewers, especially those on YouTube, not shoulder the brace so that the ATF wouldn’t get their feelings hurt. The brace was designed with a specific purpose at its inception in that it would assist those unable to shoulder an AR-15 by allowing them to put the brace on a pistol length platform and wrap the brace around their forearm allowing for one handed operation. Since the ATF was fine with people shouldering an unaltered pistol, the brace was frequently being employed as a means to circumvent NFA requirements and making AR pistols function similarly to the highly regulated short barrel rifle.

The Sig Brace even came with (and probably still does) a letter from the ATF securing the legality of the brace and the multiple purposes that it serves. Everything was fine for a while but as soon as the first video was posted of the brace being shouldered, the letters to the ATF came pouring in. The astounding thing is that these correspondences were not from the registration and regulation happy crowd, they were from law abiding gun owners basically asking the federal agency if they were really really sure that shouldering was okay.

Well finally the ATF had enough and like most people in politics they decided to flip flop and declare that the shouldering of the brace was no longer allowed. That’s right, we had a good thing going and we are the ones that screwed it all up. So now we are going to have to wait and see if Sig Sauer decides to fight the ruling and eventually we will find out if the ATF will reverse their decision again.

But, for the time being, here are four simple words for some of the gun owners out there: “Shut The Heck Up!”

Of course, there are many of us that see the Bureau of Always Totally Fudged more as a waste of money rather than an effective means of regulation. After all, who are they really regulating anyway? That’s right, it is the law abiding gun owner (some obviously a little too overzealous in their caution) not the ones that would use any of the NFA items in a nefarious way. The $200 tax stamp, extra paper work, and additional background checks are only ensuring that they know where all the legal firearms are and doing nothing to remove them from the hands of criminals. 

Heck, maybe the ones who need to be controlled are the hoplophobes who like to randomly tackle citizens legally carrying a firearm into a Florida Walmart. Those people are nuts… and fortunately now they’re going to jail. Who’s the real criminal here?