Friday, April 9, 2021

The 80% Gun Kits From A Different Angle

Of course the big story is the handful of executive actions that Dopey Gropey announced Wednesday.  As an aside Ammoland, the National Shooting Sports Federation newsletter pointed out that these are Executive Actions, not Executive Orders and like everywhere else lawyers run the world, words make a difference. 
In a 2018 article at ThoughtCo., writer Tom Murse noted, “(M)any critics [misunderstand] the definition of executive actions and the difference with legally binding executive orders.”

Executive orders, he explained, are “legally binding directives from the president to federal administrative agencies.”

Executive actions, ... carry none of the weight executive orders carry,” he wrote.
It should be remembered that none of the things Dopey talked about are executive orders.  They're the pResident telling the DOJ to do something.  I want to focus on the action related to "80% of a gun;"  Dopey McUnity wants the DOJ to sketch out a regulatory framework for requiring background checks on purchases of 80% frames, lowers and build kits (he wants them serialized).  Ignoring the obvious jokes and quips about just shifting to 79, 75 or 70% guns (80% is an arbitrary, made-up number) assume these actions to the DOJ become some sort of legally binding orders, in the next six months. 

As virtually everybody knows, 80% guns are a hobby of their own, a hobby that attracts people who like to play with tools, and like all sorts of other Do It Yourself (DIY) hobbies.  To me, though, it gets back to something I've been following with interest for quite some time, the right to repair your own equipment, as talked about in the iFixit manifesto. 


How does a move by a bunch of millennials to be able to fix smartphones or stick an off-the-shelf hard drive in their TiVo intersect with guns?   When you buy a gun, you have the right to repair and modify it.  There are millions of people who work on their own guns, replacing a spring, changing some piece of hardware or something.  Think your 10/22 could be a better competition rifle with a new barrel and trigger?  Go buy yourself the new parts and swap them out!  If you buy a 40 S&W pistol and decide you'd rather have 9 or 10mm, most of the time you can just buy a different barrel.  How many people have you come across who converted a rifle to a different caliber?  All of those are Right to Repair. 

My understanding of the origin of the "not quite a gun" regulations that give rise to the "Ghost Guns" is that it began with simply asking at what point does a gun become a gun.  They started from accepting that we have a right to repair our property and named just the one part that is the gun and can't be replaced without a background check.  It led to ideas like the receiver is always the gun, and you can replace the barrel or put in a new trigger, and every other part, but as long as it's the same receiver, it's the same gun.  Those of you familiar with the rulings on AR pistols know the oddity that a receiver that has never been a rifle can be used as an AR pistol, but if a rifle receiver is used, that makes the pistol a short-barreled rifle, an NFA item.  That's because the receiver is associated in some paper trail with being a rifle, and it will always be a rifle.  While you can repair things attached to that receiver, perhaps replace an 18" rifle barrel with a 20" barrel, you can't make a rifle a pistol. 

The thing the Biden rules are doing is attacking convenience.  They're concerned about it being too convenient to buy a plastic 80% pistol in one package and the parts to assemble it into a pistol at the same time.  Even worse, you can order or buy them at the same time and go home with everything you need to make that pistol.  It's like they'd prefer the 80% plastic gun and the rest of the parts be in different zip codes. 

How about if we give Dopey a kit and time how long it takes him to make a gun out of it?  How about we give everyone on his staff the same test?  If it takes them longer than it would take to buy a gun, they don't need to treat them as fully assembled guns.

In serializing the 80% plastic pistols, which are not guns, they're starting down the slippery slope to no right to repair, and every part in every gun needs to be serialized.   




9 comments:

  1. Best post I've read all day about kit guns. I don't think the ATF will go along with adding s/n to home made guns. Because home made guns can never be legally transferred do to the fact a NON-FFL, me in the garage, made them. The State or City I live in can have a local law telling me to go do something with my home made gun. I don't think the Federal Gov can do that, without changing a whole bunch of other stuff, that they don't want to change. The whole purpose of non president biden's gun stuff to scare off new gun owners from embracing the gun culture.
    Thank for the clear definition of EA verse EO

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  2. If this was the only thing Xiden was going to do against the 2nd Amendment, it would be bad, real bad.

    But these EAs are just the beginning of the avalanche.

    And, considering how the Supremes have acted lately, I seriously doubt they really have the Constitution's, or the People's back. Really seriously doubt the Supremes have anyone's except themselves or the Uniparty's back.

    I used to be the skeptic, doubting government and political malfeasance, but...

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    1. The Trump SCOTUS appointees have all been big disappointments. You'd hope to see SOME small modicum of spine in at least one, but none of that has been evident so far during the Biden Regime - which we all know will morph into the Harris Regime.

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  3. The goal of the commie left is a TOTALLY disarmed TOTALLY subservient slave populace. These actions by the SCROTUS infesting the White House are just ONE
    of countless efforts underway by the commie left to impose their agenda on us.
    They mean to rule....and to do so with an iron fist. And if "we the people" don't get off our collective ass and start HANGING these bastards in wholesale numbers they are going to succeed in their agenda of stealing our wealth and enslaving those of us they don't decide to murder outright.

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  4. And I say my favorite "ghost gun" (gun-grabbers term, not mine!) is the pre-1968 manufactured long gun that never had a serial number and never will. I have several. Then there are those with a serial number that have been bought and sold in private sales that the serial number can only be traced from the manfacturer to the shop it was sold at. I have a 1935 vintage S&W K-22 Outdoorsman .22 revolver that until I bought it, was off records since originally sold in Harlem, NYC.

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  5. Something, something, shall not be infringed, something.....

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  6. They are trying to establish that they have a RIGHT to require serialization and registration of anything they want to track. Once that idea is legitimized then it will be barrels, mags, foregrips, stocks, and everything else under the sun.

    Other manufacturers in other industries already do this for lot tracking, and apple does it to limit independent repair shops. Apple serializes stuff like the power management chip and then locks that to the computer or display. See louis Rossmann on youtube for more than you ever wanted to know about apple's fight against right to repair.

    Everything since 1934 has been take take take, restrict and regulate. We need to fight this tooth and nail, or your unpapered gun will soon be papered if you have to buy a part for it, and the work will have to be done at an authorized service center under federal oversight. And brother, once they know you have ONE, they'll assume you have a bunch.

    n

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  7. It's not about crime, but about control because they're afraid.

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  8. If the morons in government only knew that machine guns are much less complicated than pistols and easier to manufacture in the home workshop with junkyard parts they would crap in their drawers. AK-47 frames have been made from shovels. SMG plans are cost free in the public domain. Many of the defunct Paladin Press books are in the Wayback Machine.

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