A House Republican is introducing legislation to abolish the beleaguered Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives amid a contentious debate over the agency’s proposed ban on a bullet used in AR-15 rifles.

Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the policies under ATF’s jurisdiction could be easily incorporated into other agencies, The Hill reports.

And, he adds, the agency has been caught up in too many controversies in recent years, including the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking operation.

“The ATF is a scandal-ridden, largely duplicative agency that lacks a clear mission,” the lawmaker said, according to The Hill. “Its ‘Framework’ is an affront to the Second Amendment and yet another reason why Congress should pass the ATF Elimination Act.”

The agency has come under fire recently for its proposed ban on some types of 5.56 mm rounds used in widely available and popular AR-15-style rifles because the bullets can also be used in some new types of handguns.

Republicans also have complained \hunters frequently use the bullets, The Hill notes.

But the bureau says it initiated the regulation to help protect law enforcement officers from bullets that can pierce armored vests – a contention that has been shot down by the leader of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Sensenbrenner’s bill would transfer the ATF’s functions related to guns, explosives and violent crime to the FBI; responsibilities regarding alcohol and tobacco laws would fall under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s jurisdiction, The Hill reports.

The ATF director would have 180 days, or about six months, to submit a plan to Congress on how to wind down the agency.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, previously introduced a bill in 1993 to turn over the ATF’s duties to other parts of the Justice Department.

Meanwhile, 239 members of the House have now signed a letter opposing the bullet ban, Fox News reports.

“This attack on the Second Amendment is wrong and should be overturned,” Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who started the petition, told Fox News. “A clear, sizable majority of the House agree.”

Claiming the “ban on the quintessential militia arm of the modern day defies the protections our Constitution guarantees,” the legal team led by attorney Stephen D. Stamboulieh filed a sur-reply February 27 in the case of plaintiff Jay Aubrey Isaac Hollis against Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director B. Todd Jones. The additional reply was in response to “defendants’ reply to plaintiff’s response in opposition to defendants’ motion to dismiss, or in the alternative, for summary judgment.”

Hollis, acting individually and as trustee of a revocable living trust, is suing Holder and Jones in their official capacities for administering, executing and enforcing “statutory and regulatory provisions [that] generally act as an unlawful de facto ban on the transfer or possession of a machine gun manufactured after May 19, 1986.”

Read the rest @

http://www.examiner.com/article/court-filing-argues-post-1986-machine-gun-ban-defies-constitution?CID=examiner_alerts_article

More On Solar – II

Posted: March 5, 2015 by gamegetterII in Uncategorized

Good stuff to know-everyone should have some type of solar set-up for your home-at least a few panels for charging some 12v batteries so that with a voltage inverter,you can power your important stuff that uses electricity-like lights,comms and refrigeration.
Portable solar power generation is even better to have.

KIMS Games

Posted: March 5, 2015 by gamegetterII in Uncategorized

Great learning tool. Good way to get used to noticing and remembering details.
Maybe next time I’m wrenching on one of our or the kids cars,I’ll remember that I put the tool I’m looking for in my back pocket so I wouldn’t forget where I put it-and not spend 5 minutes looking for it before I remember it’s in my back pocket.

A Few Thoughts On Current Events

Posted: March 5, 2015 by gamegetterII in Uncategorized

If you have read my post The Pig Trap, you know of my absolute bewilderment at the current state of our country. Our government is utterly lawless, just making shit up as they go along, creating regulations and executive edicts to bypass the Congress and the Constitution, committing crimes in the furtherance of those goals, and nobody ever gets in trouble, unless he’s screwing someone he shouldn’t be, and nobody ever loses their job or goes before a judge, and most importantly, nobody seems to give a fuck. Everything is just fucking dandy, as long as we can binge-watch Girls and Entourage on HBO GO and Katy Perry’s next single doesn’t suck and that hot chick from Club Plush texts me next week…

I wake up every day around two or three in the afternoon, make a cup of coffee and turn on the news, just waiting for the day when it finally happens, the day that something finally snaps, and I am listening to Sheppard Smith breathlessly trying to describe shaky video of a mob of 500,000 or 800,000 pissed off taxpayers that has invaded Washington and are lining every street in D.C., armed to the teeth, and erecting scaffolding on the National Mall.

Actually, that’s not how I think it is going to go, but I promise you… what can not go on, will NOT go on.

Read the rest-and read ALL of it @ http://taxicabdepressions.com/?p=2479

A Fraternal Order of Police official said 5.56mm armor-piercing ammo is not typically used against officers

WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI) — The leader of a national police organization this week said a proposal to ban armor-piercing 5.56mm pistol rounds would be less effective than the government thinks.Last week, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it plans to outlaw steel-tipped 5.56mm ammunition because it now qualifies as an armor-piercing round. Sale of the ammo has been legal since 1986 because it’s a round that could not, until recently, be fired from a handgun — the stipulation necessary for prohibition of any bullet. Traditionally, the 5.56mm bullets have been fired only in AR-15 rifles.

In a 17-page report, the bureau cited new handguns that are able to fire the round, increasing the likelihood, the ATF believes, that the bullets will be used against law enforcement officers.

However, James Pasco, executive director of the Washington office of the Fraternal Order of Police, believes that banning the ammunition wouldn’t amount to much additional protection.

“This specific round has historically not posed a law enforcement problem,” he said in a report by the Washington Examiner. “While this round will penetrate soft body armor, it has not historically posed a threat to law enforcement.”

With around 325,000 members, the Fraternal Order of Police is the largest organization of sworn officers in the world.

Pasco’s statements give fuel to critics who allege the bullet ban is merely a backdoor attempt by the Obama administration to render AR-15 assault rifles useless.

Supporters of the proposed ban, however, feel that newer handguns available to shoot 5.56mm ammo increase the threat to police.

“We are looking at additional ways to protect our brave men and women in law enforcement and believe that this process is valuable for that reason alone,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. “If there are armor-piercing bullets available that can fit into easily concealed weapons, that it puts our law enforcement at considerably more risk.”

Still, opponents to the ban believe it’s unlikely criminals will purchase the expensive handguns — and even if they did, the firearms are much too large to be considered a concealed weapon.

The ATF is asking for public comment regarding the ban, to be concluded March 16. But the proposal has already encountered stiff resistance. In the House of Representatives, more than half of lawmakers have signed a letter challenging the ban, and the National Rifle Association is urging the public to ask Congress to prevent it. A similar measure is moving through the Senate.

Since news of the proposed ban earlier this month, sporting goods stores have been selling large quantities of the affected ammunition — now at higher cost.

238 Members Sign Letter Opposing Proposed Ban on AR-15 Ammunition

Fairfax, Va. – In an overwhelming show of bipartisan opposition, 238 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed a letter to the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, opposing the Obama Administration’s attempt to ban commonly used ammunition for the most popular rifle in America, the AR-15.  The National Rifle Association worked closely with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to gather signatures on this critical effort.

 “This letter sends a clear message to President Obama that Congress opposes his attempt to use his pen and phone to thwart the will of the American people,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. “Obama said he would enact his gun control agenda ‘with or without Congress.’ He is now trying to make good on that promise. The NRA would like to thank Chairman Goodlatte and all who signed the letter for opposing this unconstitutional attack on our Second Amendment freedom.”

The NRA is working with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on a similar letter of opposition from the U.S. Senate.

Read the letter @ https://shared.nrapvf.org/sharedmedia/1507341/letter-to-atf-director-jones-apa-framework-final.pdf

From Balko

At a news conference Monday, New York Police Department commissioner Bill Bratton blamed a slight uptick in violence in the city (45 homicides at this point last year, versus 54 this year) on marijuana.

“The seemingly innocent drug that’s been legalized around the country. In this city, people are killing each other over marijuana more so than anything that we had to deal with [in the] 80s and 90s with heroin and cocaine . . . In some instances, it’s a causal factor. But it’s an influence in almost everything that we do here.”

Hyperbole at its finest. Even if this year’s uptick holds through December (and it’s worth noting that we’re only dealing with eight weeks of data, here), New York would end the year with 383 murders. The city saw 2,245 murders in 1990.

I’m not exactly sure by what Rube Goldbergian chain of events Bratton thinks legalization in Colorado and Washington is causing homicides in New York City, but it’s clear that he thinks there’s a connection. Another NYPD official said the problem appears to be “ripoffs” — not turf battles, but attempted robberies gone wrong.

Of course, if we want a more direct examination of what effect legal pot might have on homicide, we can just look at the cities where it’s legal. Here’s what we know:

Homicides dropped 24 percent in Denver last year, the first full year of legalization in Colorado. Robberies were down 3 percent. Burglary was down 9.5 percent. The only crimes that increased significantly were larceny (a property crime, not a violent crime) and arson, which seems unlikely to be related to marijuana. Overall, violent crime dropped 0.7 percent, and property crime dropped 2 percent.

Homicides did increase slightly in Seattle (from 23 to 26), the largest city in the other state to legalize the drug. But it’s more difficult to draw conclusions there because the Washington law was quite a bit stricter than the Colorado law, and still left room for a thriving black market.

Of course, we only have a year’s worth of data from Colorado. But then, Bratton is drawing broad conclusions based on just eight weeks.

I won’t argue that legalized marijuana is responsible for the 24 percent drop in homicides in Denver last year. There’s not nearly enough data to jump to a conclusion like that. But it’s still a hell of a lot more defensible than arguing that it’s responsible for an increase in homicides in New York.

http://www.plan.org.au/~/media/Images/Blog/2014/blog_20140604%20Nauru.ashx?mh=405&mw=635

http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-if-i-am-detained-plan.html