In a baffling uninformative email, True Velocity, the makers of the still rather failure to launch polymer cased ammunition of extraordinary expense, have sent out this.
True Velocity’s special edition Patriot rounds represent the first time that private labeled ammunition has been a reality. Visit tvammo.com to order yours while supplies last!
That was it. That was the entirety of the email under the subject line Private Labeled Ammunition.
I… don’t know what that means. Private labeled ammunition? Like you can print whatever little graphic I want on the plastic?
Neat.
I guess.
It’s still $65/20 of .308 Win match and with a less than stellar ignition report from the few folks I know who’ve been able to try it.
Meanwhile if you click that image, or here, that’s Gold Medal Match for $34 (as of this writing and stock levels)
So… why? We keep being told polymer cased ammunition is a serious advance in technology that improves over metallic case and yet when it hits my inbox this feels like a gimmick. Why does this feel like a reskin of the collector edition sets that were even more expensive than this new UberPatriot edition?
Look! Flag! ‘Merica! Eagle Screeches! We can put labels on polymer cases in case you want these disposable ammunition cases to be… labeled?
For twice the price of well established factory match ammunition.
This feels like a corporate party favor, not a serious match or defensive product.
But if you want some extra ‘Merica on your .308 rounds, True Velocity has your back.
JUST FILED: A class-action lawsuit against AG Bonta for releasing the personal info of California gun owners in violation of the 2nd & 4th Amendments, the CA Constitution, and CA law. https://t.co/J5B3BaHeCH
— National Foundation for Gun Rights (@NFGR_Official) July 2, 2022
The National Foundation for Gun Rights (NFGR) filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 600,000 Californian gun owners whose sensitive private data was leaked by the state. Names, race, birthdates, driver’s license numbers, gender, addresses and criminal histories of anyone who applied for a concealed carry permit in California over the last decade were published on CA’s 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal, publicly available to anyone a with a phone, and the ability to wander near a Starbucks or McDonald’s.
If a government is going to maintain a list of its citizens private information, then it should be for an objectively good purpose. Some might argue about the value of such a list, but to be frank, concealed carry permit holders are one of the least dangerous demographics in the United States, regardless of their race, sex, or class. This is the narrowest possible end from which to attempt to fight crime. A 1999 study of Texas CHL holders compared them to the general population and found that they were 7.5-7.9 times less likely to be arrested for commission of a violent crime. Of the few who were arrested, nearly half had the charges dropped.
So we have a list of people who are nearly an order of magnitude more likely to be law abiding, and if they do get arrested, it’s about a 50/50 chance they walk. Doesn’t sound like the group law enforcement should be devoting time and money to monitoring does it? Well, so long as nothing bad happens, it’s just kind of a waste of time, and not actively harmful.
Except that’s precisely what happened. There is no objective good to be had from these de-facto registration schemes, ignoring the fact that they are illegal federally. So that leaves potential harm, and in this case, that harm was realized as hundreds of thousands of law-abiding gun owners had an electronic flag planted in their front yard announcing the presence of a highly prized item for violent felons, for anyone willing to do something about it. And that ignores the potential social impact of neighbors being able to look up who in the neighborhood might be one of those “Crazy gun nuts”.
Initially, we were told this leak was limited to concealed carry permit holders, but later they admitted it was data they’d stored from every application, rejected or approved. Given that concealed carry permits are an indicator of ownership of valuable weapons, and are often acquired by scared, vulnerable people (along with restraining orders and attempts to erase their public presence to evade stalkers, rapists, or violent ex’es), this is more than just an inconvenient violation of privacy. This could kill people at worst, and lead to robberies, or home invasions at best. So it’s no surprise that someone took up the mantle of forcing government accountability on this issue.
My buddy over at VSO thinks you’re probably using your offset sights wrong.
He might have a point.
I don’t know how you’re using your sights, only you do, so I can neither confirm nor deny your rightness or wrongness.
However offsets are something a lot of folks are running and they are failing to account for a few things.
So let’s talk about those.
Do you need offsets?
Probably not.
“But then.. why are you..?”
Hold a second, I said probably not.
If you’re running a dot as primary, you don’t need offsets. If you’re running a fixed prism in the 1-4x range, you don’t need offsets. If you’re running an LPVO, you don’t need offsets.
In all of those instances you can still run offsets if you want, but you don’t need them. You aren’t getting enough distortion at your eyeball to make indexing a close target too problematic. It will start getting a little odd at 4x, which is why I think the TA31 ACOG and TA11 enjoyed the reputations they do but the 5.5x
When do I ‘need’ them?
Offsets make most sense in two particular instances, and this can apply to offset dots and dots mounted atop a scope too.
Need a second zero
If I am running competition or a rifle set up where I need a second zero that is vastly different than my primary optic’s zero, an offset or offsets makes sense.
This will usually be a very close zero where the primary zero is at 50 or 100 and the secondary is something like 15, 25, or even 7. (Meters or Yards)
Primary optic is for distance, offset(s) are for close
If the low end magnification on your optic is a 2x or more, its high end magnification is probably 10x or greater. Cranking down a magnification in order to address a close in target is more time consuming than moving the eye/rifle to the non-magnified optic/sights.
If the primary optic can’t quickly index onto the target that is what the offset(s) are for, a quick and dirty ‘good enough’ and squeeze the trigger.
About those angles
The video covers nicely properly indexing the sights over the barrel for best effect.
What offsets do is stack competing angles and that can mess with your point of impact by quite a bit, as he demonstrates.
The optic directly above the barrel is indexed to the angle of the barrel when the rifle is held vertically. Remember the barrel is angled up to get more distance out of the shot, we’ve been doing it for centuries.
Now if we offset the sight, we add an additional angle to the flight of the bullet. We’re canting the original vertical angle either left or right by 20, 30, or 45 degrees and any further offsets that complicate that angle.
Don’t overthink it. Just realize that once your lining up an offset shot, you’re putting a left or right arc on the flight path of the round. In order to make certain your lined up shot is somewhere around where the sight is showing, you need to understand what that round is doing in the space and distance.
Remember also that doing a short distance zero means putting the sight(s) and barrel at a relatively dramatic angle to each other and that is going to limit the amount of distance that the offset sight is worth anything. Longer distance zeroes with more gradual flight paths will give you more usable range.
I’m a big fan of 50 (yards or meters, I don’t care which) as the absolute zero point, so that 1-75 or even 1-100 puts my impact point near enough my sight to be useful. Doing something like a 7 yard zero means my round is hauling out widely left or right very quickly once it passes my zero distance. But if I’m using the offset on a rifle for competition and I just need to smoke the A-Zone up close twice real quick, that might fit my use for the optic.
Use dictates zero
Like I said above, I prefer zeroing the sights at 50. Between 0 and 50 the round will be closing the offset distance, 2.5-4 inches, at an angle to the sights then the roughly next 50 it will continue onward until a roughly equivalent offset happens at around roughly 100. Roughly. You could track the impact cone if you know each angle but close enough will work in these instances.
Quick and dirty. Close enough.
Now taking that same rough math and reduce the zero to 7 yards. Now you are 4 inches off at the muzzle, on at 7 yards, and off again around 4 inches by 14 yards. But now trying to hit a 25 yard target… around 10 inches off the point of aim at an odd angle. By 50 yards it’s better than 20 inches of distance from your point of aim at a weird angle. Making your really useful distance with that 7 yard from about 3 or 4 yards to about 11 or 12. Not that it’s impossible to Kentucky Windage any shot outside that bracket, but you’re fighting yourself for almost no gain unless you really need that 7 yard PAO/POI to line up.
I would argue and my experience has been that it is easier to get used to optical offset and correct for it up close than it is at distance.
The Swiss History of arms is one of the more enlightened ones worldwide. While they have conformed to some of the EU’s requests regarding acquisition of personal firearms, the tradition of the swiss being an at home ready reserve military and storing their issued weapons at home still maintains.
The Swiss have access to all kinds of weapons under both shall-issue and may-issue legal statutes that are fairly permissive, especially for Europe, and their tradition of arms in the nation for defense, service, and hunting is a strong one.
That all said, one of the coolest rifles that they can get new (and we cannot because imports and costs and such) is the SG 550. The aesthetically pleasing and smooth looking rifle was designed back when we in the States were converting to the M16A2, it isn’t an overly sophisticated weapon, nor is it one that is outclassed by modern designs. The 550 is a good rifle though, and because it is a good rifle but no longer the best (and because we want what is hard to get) we tend to give it some additional gravitas that it would otherwise not enjoy in direct head to head competition.
Ian’s video too.
The rifle is chambered in 5.6mm (which is 5.56×45 NATO but the Swiss’ own non-SS109 projectile) and the government will issue ammunition for competition at state sanctioned events where the 550’s will come out or be provided by the government for use. It’s a rather excellent contender in the space against the M16A2, the G36, and AK74, and holds our nostalgic attention for when we just want simpler firearms than our light, sight, and laser festooned modern rifles.
Those rifles are function.
The 550 and its ilk are now an image unto themselves, an air of simplicity that still gets the job done. A working statement on how you don’t need to complicate a system, despite the benefits of the additions, to get a result.
Absolute facts that the historiologists at Babylon Research Institute of Searching Reaches have painstakingly pulled from their orifices for your entertainment and delight.
See how many actual buzzwords you can spot by people who actually make the life altering legal decisions that you are responsible for though. That part is genuinely terrifying. When you cannot discern the difference between the satire site doing it for fun and a California, New York, or Illinois aligned politico, that’s just sad.
Folks, even with the rather tumultuous state the world currently inhabits do not put on the nostalgia hat and rose colored glasses of the past too seriously. Why? Because historically the ‘good old days’ weren’t all that good, we’re just remembering the good parts of then against the bad parts of now.
The 21st Century is unequivocally the best time to have been alive in history. Even though parts of the world are at war, even though America is seeing a politician led decline in our civility towards each other, even though things are far from perfect they are still pretty damn good on the grand scale. We need to force perspective. We need to ground ourselves, touch grass as the parlance of today puts it.
We need to awake and recognize that the perfection of an “easier than we had it” future that our parents promised isn’t happening, not for their lack of trying but they could never deliver. We can keep getting better among instances that are still bad, but that doesn’t mean things aren’t good. Our greatest political ‘end of the world’ turmoil in the nation can be fixed in our legislatures and with votes as civil members of community.
But we’ve seen our faith decline so far that every fresh tragedy gets FedFlagged immediately, and it gets harder and harder to hear “known to authorities” without asking how many of these are you not going to catch team? It stopping being a joke and starting to be the FBI is the joke, or actively collaborating so that they can get a big win arrest and then they screw it up.
Don’t think the cops would invent a crime to solve? Ha! The kidnapping of Whitmer in Michigan is just the most recent and egregious example.
But all that aside, we’ve still got it damn good here and we are further from the brink than the doomers would have us believe. I honestly wonder how much doomer prop is contributing to the various feelings of violent intent in the young as we continue to experience attacks from disenfranchised young men.
Two shootings at two 4th of July Celebrations. The Highland Park, Illinois shooting claimed six lives and over two dozen injuries and the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania shooting appears to have targeted the police directly. Two officers were hit by gunfire but neither seriously in the Philadelphia attack.
Illinois
The shooter in Highland Park was apprehended after a manhunt and brief chase into Lake Forest, Illinois. The 22 year old suspect has not been tied to a motive for the attack at this time but is alleged to have a fairly extensive online profile, styling himself a rapper or hip-hop artist of some manner.
The rifle has not been identified beyond “high powered” and it is said to have been purchased legally. The suspect lived with his father and uncle so it is not known if the shooter himself purchased the rifle, thus being background checked and having a FOID on file with the state, or if the firearm was owned by the father or uncle instead.
The father is said to have run for mayor and is a local business owner.
Highland Park’s Mayor, Nancy Rotering, is calling for another look at gun laws as she says attacks like this are happening weekly.
“I think it’s pretty clear what needs to be done. We need this nation to have a very strong conversation about what it means if we are coming together to celebrate our freedom and independence and people have to face a terrorist on a rooftop with guns that were obtained legally. That’s a problem.”
This is where we get back into political posturing, unfortunately.
I think it’s pretty clear what needs to be done.
It apparently is not, since we keep having the same circular conversation of anti-gunners wanting the impossible and getting mad when they are reminded that it is a combination of impossible and highly illegal infringement upon enumerated civil rights.
We need this nation to have a very strong conversation about what it means if we are coming together to celebrate our freedom and independence and people have to face a terrorist on a rooftop with guns that were obtained legally.
Mayor, I know what you mean by ‘strong conversation’ and isn’t a conversation. It’s a lecture of what you would like to see done regardless of facts, opinions, and rights to the contrary. Terrorists, fun fact, do not have a magical tag that pops up over their heads identifying them to NICS or state agencies unless, wait for it, they’ve been tried and convicted of terrorism.
Background checks do not work if there is no background to be checked, and no a bunch of ‘violent’ rap music videos don’t count, otherwise most musicians in many genres would be automatically disqualified. Violent video games, sharing questionable memes, reading books with violence in them, and any number of protected forms of expression that do not correlate to a logical prohibition on owning arms.
That’s a problem.
It is several problems. Not all interconnected either. Motivations for shootings and security to prevent and respond to shootings are all different problems with layered solutions. None of those ‘solutions’ are going to be perfect though and people like Mayor Rotering have a hard enough time properly outlining the scope of the problems and they tend to be married heavily to their ‘common sense’ solutions.
There are two types, as Colion Noir says in his video here, of people who ask the question, “Why do you need an AR-15?”
The first type, the type we prefer as educated firearm owners and 2nd Amendment advocates, is someone who is genuinely curious why. Why is the AR-15 useful? Why is it special? Why is it preferred by gun owners? Why are gun controllers wrong to want to ban it if it keeps being used in mass shootings?
These are all very genuine ‘whys’ and answering them honestly, in a manner to promote dialog and further education on the subject, builds these inquisitive types into more 2A advocates over time. They will, in most circumstances, come away with a variety of positive views on your point of view because you took the time to answer the questions in an honest, friendly, and reasoned way that didn’t strike them as hostile, confrontational, or irrationally conspiratorial.
All those latter which gun control groups love to portray gun owners as. The more tin foil they can reasonably imply that you wear, the better for their messages of “common sense” safety measures born of their own fear and impotence in matters of safety.
Remember, gun control fanatics need you to be wrong because they cannot be right otherwise. There position only holds if you, a gun owner, are more wrong than they are because their solutions are objectively terrible. They only become more ‘common sense’ if you, the “gun nut” are more nonsensical than they are. It’s all about scale.
The second type, the type you should feel no obligation to justify yourself towards, is the askhole. Not the traditional askhole, someone who asks for advice on a gun or gear and then picks the terrible option, no these askholes want to ask the question they’ve already made up their mind on so they can be confrontational about it. They ‘know‘ you don’t need an AR-15 because its a weapon of war and only good for killing lots of people really quickly, or whatever the fear line of the day is.
So they’re just there to cause you a headache, they’re there to get their mad out and you happen to be in the verbal line of fire. They associate you with the bad thing and no amount of reason is going to make them reconsider when their easy cathartic release for their anger is you.
It sucks. Its annoying.
Save your energy for the genuine askers. Smile and roll your eyes at the askholes.
Make sure you give the video a like on the Tubes of You.
Highland Park Response, via Northern Provisions IG
Illinois police officials and multiple news agencies are reporting that a 4th of July parade was attacked from a rooftop by a shooter with a rifle.
The reported death count is 6 and up to 26 are listed as wounded.
The suspect is still at large. He is described as a late teens early 20s male with long black hair. Having fled the scene and left the rifle on the roof, a rifle has been found and police are searching for a gunman who opened fire at about 10:14 a.m. No known motive for the attack has been attributed to the shooting at this time.
Parades and other gathering events like marathons are often targeted for terrorist acts. The Waukesha parade attack also killed 6 and left 62 injured. The Boston Marathon Bombing killed 3 but injured nearly 300.
Illinois has stringent rules in place for firearm owners, one of the few states requiring special renewed licensure to own a firearm with their FOID system.
Despite this Chicago is plagued with violence. While today’s attack will undoubtedly turn out to be an especially brutal event, and for no good reason beyond ego, the weekend had already seen 9 dead and many wounded in the city. Five people were shot in Grand Crossing just after midnight.
[Ed: There’s no better way to mark July 4th than to read our country’s Declaration of Independence. The original orthography is retained, but the specific complaints about King George and Parliament’s abuses are edited out in order to focus on the principles that applied then, do now, and always will. Reposted since 2019.]
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In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present [Government] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. . . .
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A [Government] whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to . . . rule . . . a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our [Governors]. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by [them] to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all [other] Allegiance . . . , and that all political connection between [us], is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
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— DRGO Editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Caleb and I talk over just how bad the California DoJ’s epic failure of information security was.
In a move that is at best gross incompetence and at worst an outright doxxing of CCW permit holders, on Monday the Cali DOJ published a database which contained the names, addresses, and other personally identifiable information of everyone who had ever so much as applied for a CCW permit in Cali in the last decade. Nice.
Bad. Really bad. Like everything possible they should have protected about you except your social security number was yeeted upon the data streams of the internet for anyone to do with as they like.
Single mother with a protection order who applied for and got a permit? Your crazy ex whom you got the permit for has access to your address now. Single mother who applied for the permit for that exact previous reasons and got denied. Crazy ex still has your address and knows you didn’t get the permit to carry your gun and possibly whether or not you own one at all.
Oopsies.
I’m sure Attorney General Bonta’s, “We understand the seriousness of this situation, seriously.” Claims will make that all good though and the the DoJ is leveraging their law enforcement resources to protect California’s vulnerable citizens whose data being public facing put them in much greater harms way… Right?
In a move that is at best gross incompetence and at worst an outright doxxing of CCW permit holders, on Monday the Cali DOJ published a database which contained the names, addresses, and other personally identifiable information of everyone who had ever so much as applied for a CCW permit in Cali in the last decade. Nice.
West Virginia Attorney General sends letter requesting CCW reciprocity to Maryland Governor.
"The dictates of the Court's decision are clear. Through one means or another, Maryland must now afford West Virginians a way of publicly carrying in Maryland for self-defense." pic.twitter.com/7fLqtQjoJH
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) June 28, 2022
West Virginia just let everyone know that the NYSRPA v. Bruen decision ended the restrictive and unconstitutional “May-Issue” permitting scheme once and for all. As a result, Maryland will have to come up with some other way to harass anyone trapped there. Fortunately for us, the 2A champions over at FPC were on deck to make sure we all got to watch.
Firstly, it’s bad enough Maryland doesn’t trust their own people to carry. Secondly, they also don’t trust anyone else! Because they’re such good neighbors, West Virginia has had this one in the chamber ready to go. Less than a week after the SCOTUS ruling, they apparently just said “Send it”.
Without solid legal footing to reject reciprocity, due to the Supreme Court’s shooting down may-issue permitting schemes, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Oregon, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York are all now potentially subject to the same treatment. They have long histories of rejecting other states permits, and we are looking forward to seeing what the final net result of this far-reaching decision will be.
How will Maryland reply? How quickly will this sort of request spread? It will be interesting to see how quickly this snowballs. Hopefully other states will be reminded to respect the constitution, their citizens, and the rule of law.
NEW: Heller v. DC (D. DC): Dick Heller files lawsuit challenging Washington DC's regulation that limits concealed carriers "to the amount of ammunition that would load [their] gun twice, but no more than 20 rounds total." https://t.co/VGhZ3kbToNpic.twitter.com/GVAnKcegGZ
Habitual challenger of unconstitutional gun laws Dick Heller is back. Once again suing Washington D.C., it seems he’s not satisfied with raking the feds over the coals four times. However this time, it’s about magazine capacity laws limiting citizens to 20rds. Heller’s filing cites not only the recent SCOTUS verdict on Bruen, but his own winning case from ’08, and others.
Heller became a household name in 2008 when SCOTUS sided with him against the District. His landmark case blew open gun control nationwide, and opened the door to later wins for civil rights. It dismissed the absurd notion that a militia was necessary for Americans to keep and bear arms. Resulting impacts have been felt in courts from New York to California. Most notably, Heller’s win led to restored carry rights to Illinoisans in McDonald v. Chicago.
Despite trouncing the nation’s capitol in court, the city government made it difficult to obey the new carry law. While DC is shall-issue, once you’ve got a permit, carrying in DC is difficult at best. They placed restrictions on where one can carry, from public land, to within 1,000′ of a visiting dignitary. Dignitaries don’t just stand in place the whole time, or announce their travel plans while visiting DC. While they are uncommon in most of the country, as you can imagine, it’s a regular thing in DC.
What isn’t uncommon though, is visiting other human beings in their homes, be it friends or clients. DC law made it a crime to carry in a residence without the property owner’s permission. Not satisfied with criminalizing hangouts, they also banned carrying in a church, without express permission. The laundry list of problems with DC’s carry laws is too long to cover here. Lets just leave it at “ballistic fingerprinting wasn’t even the worst of them”.
In light of this and many other issues with DC’s carry restrictions, Heller went back to court 3 more times. Winning some concessions, and losing others, he just won’t stop. Holding feet to the fire in DC seems to be his entire wheelhouse these days, and we’re glad for it. While some might expect Dick to kick back and relax at his age, it’s just not in him. Regardless, we’re thankful men like him exist to continue the fight against gun control, and look forward to another victory.
Brownells is one of 10 retailers that the New York Attorney General Letita James and NYC Mayor Mike Adams, along with support from Governor Hochul no doubt, have targeted in a series of suits they say are meant to combat ‘ghost guns’ within their states.
The suit alleges that these retailers sell parts that can be assembled into what the ATF is now referring to as a PMF, a Privately Made Firearm, and can be “sold” without a background check.
This is stretch of the truth as the only components that can be sold without a background check are ones the ATF has stated are not firearms. The ATF has additionally confirmed the serial numbers are not required when making a PMF but they are required when selling it. A person prohibited from possessing a serialized firearm is equally in violation of the law if they possess a PMF. Any retailer in New York transferring a PMF would be required to serialize it per ATF and conduct the state and federal compliant checks.
The AG and Mayor contend that ‘ghost guns’ have been found at an increasing number of crime scenes and are blaming companies like Brownells for it.
“These are dangerous weapons,” Adams, a former police officer, said at a Manhattan news conference with James and other officials. “We should not think these are just kits used for hobbyists. They are being used by murderers. All of them are illegal.”
From the start of 2016 through the close of 2020, the ATF reported some 24,000 suspected ghost guns were recovered nationally, not just in New York, by law enforcement from potential crime scenes. Roughly 325 homicides or attempted homicides were committed using the weapons.
To put that in scale. From 2016 to 2020 the FBI UCR states:
For 2016 – 2020, there were 30,133 homicide incidents, and 32,600 offenses reported in the United States by at most 7,114 law enforcement agencies that submitted National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data, and covers 33% of the total population.
For 2016 – 2020, there were 1,262,078 aggravated-assault incidents, and 1,573,778 offenses reported in the United States by at most 7,114 law enforcement agencies that submitted National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data, and covers 33% of the total population.HOW THESE NUMBERS ARE CALCULATED
The FBI does not filter by attempted murder in their statistics, it is only distinguished from aggravated assault by the premediated intent to kill in the assault so I use the AA stat here.
So even if we take the abbreviated homicide information from NIBRS and made that a totality of incidents, or we triple the number of ghost guns to account for fact the the NIBRS is only covering 33% of the population (both scientifically suspect but I’ll indulge it since it errs in New York’s favor) that means ghost guns account for less than 1% of weapons used in homicides if every single one of them was used in a homicide that made it into the NIBRS.
But they included attempted homicides, which means the percentage drops even further as some of those 325 ‘Ghost Guns‘ were used in the aggravated assault category and not the homicide. The ratio of offense is 50 to 1, which if we apply that to the 325 ghost guns means they were at 6 or 7 murder offenses.
Put another way, the CDC tracked 76,713 firearm homicides from 2016 to 2020. This means that if 324 out of the 325 were homicides and only one was an attempted homicide and if each ghost gun killed two people (both of these are absurd over estimations ) that ghost guns accounted for .84% of firearm homicide deaths during this five year period and the percentage of total homicides is even smaller.
So even by wildly overestimating and giving an absolutely astonishing benefit of the doubt to Adams, James, and Hochul, they are attempting to sue away less than 1% of the nation’s homicide problem because a piece of plastic or metal doesn’t have a number on it. So are they pursuing good fundamental policy or are they just sore losers who finally got called on their anti-2A agenda?
The numbers seem to indicate something when you do a bit of math, just saying.
I bought my wonderfully fun Zenith (MKE Era) MP5 from them while I was at school in Des Moines. I can tell you, first hand, that they were very cognizant of the rules for any manner of out of state purchaser. I was an out of state purchaser and we made arrangements to ship the gun so I could do all the proper transfer forms within my home state, as required by Federal law at a Michigan FFL. I essentially completed an online purchase in person and had it shipped to the appropriate FFL for all the final legal items.
GAT Editor running a ‘Break Contact’ drill at a Teufelshund Tactical/HSP MP5 Operators Course
My friend and classmate wanted to purchase an AR lower while we were there and Brownells was equally cognizant of his state’s requirements for the lower as they were with mine for the pistol transfer.
While I cannot say for certain that no violations have ever been shipped by the Brownells warehouse, their behavior during my direct interactions with them indicate an extremely detailed level of care when it comes to the legalities of each state.
Multiple sources have now confirmed that UPS is shutting down their shipping accounts, retailers who deal in products like the Polymer80 frame. The complaint is, allegedly, that these retailers are shipping 80% type PMF products to states that ban 80% PMF products. No confirmation has been given by UPS that they have packages with prohibited materials going to ban states, only that they believe it to be so, but one source GAT Daily has spoken with confirmed they filter out states where 80% type product SKUs are illegal.
In the letter, dated June 20th, the United Parcel Service (UPS) has shut down the shipping account of the retailer for selling ‘Ghost Guns‘. A second retailer, today, confirmed that their account was also terminated for the same reason.
If UPS is intercepting packages of legal products from these retailers and destroying them thinking they are ghost guns that is a massive breach of trust on the part of UPS with their retail customers.
Readers may remember that President Biden fixed the ‘Ghost Gun’ problem with the ATF by putting together the ‘readily assembled’ language. Retailers in the industry wishing to maintain their businesses made the necessary changes to the products to again place them in compliance with the regulations regarding Privately Made Firearms, now known as PMFs under ATF 2021R-05F.
Under 2021R-05F, PMFs still do not require serialization. Under the new rules, the defining factors make very specific mention of the inclusion of finishing tools, jigs, and included instruction, which combined can make an 80% frame readily completable, and thus a ghost gun, or just a normal firearm part if purchased stand alone.
UPS, a private company with no regulatory authority, has stated it has taken it upon themselves to “seize and destroy” private property. These retail companies worked directly with the ATF in order to establish clear criteria to continue to support PMF builders within full compliance of the new rules. UPS, apparently on their own initiative, and not with any cited request or noted directive from the ATF or a prohibiting state, shut down service and has declared they may destroy packages in their possession from the retailers.
Attempts to resolve this with UPS have been met with reported confusion on the part of local management and no response from the compliance department itself, according to the retailers.
Brownells has also now been caught up in this according to official social media posts on their Facebook and Twitter.
