NRA vs NY AG
As we have been fixated (as a nation) on the war in Ukraine for the past two weeks, the mundane trudge of legal developments can often go less than noticed.
One of those was a big win for the National Rifle Association as New York Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen blocked the New York Attorney General’s attempt to dissolve the organization.
Like it , hate it, or indifferent overall, the NRA has been a legislative momentum power house pushing several critical pieces of 2A legislation and defending against encroachments. The alleged actions of its highest executives and the infighting that has occured behind sometimes thinly closed doors put the NRA, as beneficial an organization, in jeopardy.
However Letitia James, the New York Attorney General and known rabid anti-gunner, went to far and instead of limiting the scope of her suit to the individuals who could be replaced heading the NRA she instead attacked the organization. That would require her proving that the organization, not individuals in its management, were deliberately using funding inappropriately and that the membership was okay with this because that is secretly what they wanted all along, to give Wayne Lapierre shiny toys and the “good life.”
As it turns out, no. That is not what the rank and file of the NRA want, they want to fund the training and pro-2A legislative efforts that are the NRA’s core missions. So the Attorney General got told, “The Complaint does not allege that any financial misconduct benefited the NRA, or that the NRA exists primarily to carry out such activity, or that the NRA is incapable of continuing its legitimate activities on behalf of its millions of members. In short, the Complaint does not allege the type of public harm that is the legal linchpin for imposing the ‘corporate death penalty.’ “
So the most devastating thing that could have happened to the NRA and setting back gun rights both legislatively and socially, as the NY AG would delight in, didn’t occur.
Constitutional Carry
Constitutional carry, sometimes called permit-less carry, is advancing in Ohio, Indiana, and Alabama. This would add three more states that recognize that if you are able to legally own a gun then you are legally able to carry a gun.
The normal chorus of, “Dangerous!” “Blood in the streets!” “Untrained!!!” and the like have all proven to be a non-issue. Firearms owners who are safe, are safe and often take instruction without government mandate or prompting. Those who are dangerous are still dangerous with a permit from a state mandated basics course. It is like expecting the presence of a driver’s license to stop vehicle accidents. They don’t and the do not prevent the unlicensed from driving if they so feel the need or desire. The moment the convenience and gain from breaking the law outweighs the projected consequences, the law is broken.
Firearms safety is a developed discipline and cannot reasonably be mandated by the government without the government also providing the access to quality instruction, in a public education setting perhaps.
The government, and society as a whole, would have a stronger basis for demanding a higher level of societal proficiency in that case. Firearms would be seen as a societal discipline. Instead we have a loud and aggressive segment of society who vilifies the general discipline and makes up rather confusing and contrarian rules, conditions, and licensures for its exercise.
NFA
While the eFile system for From 4’s seems to finally be running (mostly) and this should help improve transfer times, not all is well in the NFA ATF land.
Reports of a mass rejection of ATF Form 1’s, the application to make an NFA item and add it to the registry, circulated and then an update was pushed out by ATF.
It seems like they are, at the least, trying to catalog anywhere “kits” are sold for silencers so they can later hammer them later if they suddenly decide how much finished tube counts as a silencer has changed.
Because.. you know.. reasons…
The ATF does not require these things when assembling an SBR or SBS, why a silencer?
Why are silencers still NFA items at all? Do we have any evidence of them being particularly useful for crime backed up by criminal manufacture or misuse en masse? Because we’ve had silencers for over a century. They are not regulated in many locales abroad with overall much stricter firearm regulation than here in the United States, and yet now we are going to make it harder for people to comply with the law when it is already a burden?
How is making it more difficult to comply with Form 1 rules going to increase compliance? How is this effort preventing violent and inexcusable use of weapons by criminal elements?
Or are we just concerned that these are so easy to make that harassing people who want to both self assemble and comply with the NFA is the solution and that somehow, someway, it will prevent the non-compliant from doing so if they deem these a necessary tool for their criminality…
Yeah, seems really dumb when you break it down.
We also haven’t seen the final verbiage on frames, receivers, and braces yet. So that’s fun.
And that, dear readers, is the 2A Today
