ATF and DOJ Continue Abuses While Being Bipolar on Guns

“Federal prosecutors now using ATF’s lies and fake evidence to harm former sailor’s legal appeal,” Lee “The Gunwriter” Williams documents for the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. “It now appears that the only way former American sailor, Patrick ‘Tate’ Adamiak, may get out of his undeserved 20-year prison sentence is through a presidential pardon, because federal prosecutors are now using the lies and fake evidence created by the ATF to fight an appeal filed by the 31-year-old former Navy E-6, who had just been accepted by Naval Special Warfare before his arrest.”

So much for “Thank you for your service.” And “lies and fake evidence”…? Over what? “Because Adamiak’s possession of an unregistered machinegun fell outside the scope of the Second Amendment, the district court properly denied his motion to dismiss,” Assistant United States Attorney Jacqueline R. Bechara claimed. “Adamiak had gun parts but not any illegal firearms, and he certainly had no machineguns,” Williams, citing the appellant’s attorney, counters.

So why is the government saying that he did? And what’s with the official position of the Trump/Bondi Justice Department, that arms suitable for Militia use and uninfringed keeping and bearing, are “outside the scope” of 2A?

To answer the first question, it’s because ATF’s informant lied, and because ATF’s Firearms Enforcement Officer “actually turned toys into firearms, legal RPGs into destructive devices and 100% legal semi-autos into machineguns,” by “insert[ing] a real STEN action and a real STEN barrel into Adamiak’s toy STEN submachinegun … [classified] five of Adamiak’s …  legal semi-autos … as machineguns …  ruled that several receivers that had been cut in half were actually machineguns [and] rebuilt … inert RPGs … add[ing] parts from ATF’s real RPGs until they would fire a single subcaliber 7.62x39mm round.”

If that sounds inventive, it really wasn’t. It’s a time-tested (and filthy) ATF practice to entrap, counting on defendants not having the wherewithal to expose it and judges not having the knowledge and/or the inclination to know any better or to care.

Case in point from 2008, ATF tried to entrap firearms designer Len Savage over a part he submitted that would allow for cheaper ammunition to be used. The Firearms Technology Branch declared it a machinegun after adding “metal, a length of chain, some duct tape and some plastic wire ties for the agency to make his gun part operate in that fashion.”

And Savage makes a compelling case that this was retaliation for his expert testimony in an earlier trial, when another veteran’s loaned rifle malfunctioned at a range, firing off short bursts before jamming.  It didn’t matter that the rifle in question had not been intentionally modified for select fire. It didn’t matter that the government had repeatedly failed to replicate automatic fire until they replaced the ammunition with a softer primer type. The manipulated jury returned a “guilty” verdict.

To answer the second question, it’s because the government is operating based on limited knowledge, past practice, ingrained biases, and from within a closed echo chamber that insulates decision makers from outside influences. That’s why we see current wild swings of the gun control pendulum, with the administration proposing good things, like investigating California pattern and practice infringements, accompanied in the same timeframe by stupid, offensive,  and outright tyrannical crap like AUSA Bechara is pulling.

The people in charge seem to keep being taken by surprise. Why? And how do we change that?

“Pam Bondi and the others are extremely busy with a lot of things,” You Tube’s popular Four Boxes Diner notes in its “Important: How You Can Help Protect 2A!” video. “But the reality is we in the Second Amendment community are going to have to work hard to bring things to their attention. If you see anything out there that seems inconsistent with the right to keep and bear arms … you observe it, you report it to everyone in the Second Amendment community. You let all the Second Amendment groups know, you let the YouTubers know, you let the Second Amendment influencers know, you let everyone know about this situation…”

“Senior officials at the Department of Justice and in the White House can’t track everything going on in America right now,” the video continues.  “We in the Second Amendment community need to help them do their jobs. We need to pull this information together. We need to identify problems for them, recommend solutions, and then bring it to the people that count.”

In other words, if you see something, say something. That’s great advice and I agree completely. The question that remains is “HOW do we get it to ‘the people that count’”? Comprehensively and consistently? How do we get the president’s ear?

Some of us have tried and our efforts have proven as effective as screaming at his passing limousine from the sidewalk crowd. I’ll cite my own experiences, and while I don’t kid myself about being an influencer of any importance, between the national gun magazines and websites I have and continue to write for, it ain’t nothin’. That’s why I was disappointed during Trump’s first term, when I lobbed the administration a no-brainer softball, pointing out an easily correctable error on the White House website, where it claimed, “The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.” I wrote an article that got national exposure. I created a petition using the White House’s own petition tool. Thousands of gun owners signed it. And it was all over social media, with @realDonaldTrump copied on Twitter.

To no one’s surprise, it was never acknowledged, and nothing ever was done. (By comparison, I actually got a good response when I contacted George W. Bush’s administration and got them to issue a significant correction to a Federal Register entry: “When the FAA issued a final rule on human space flight, it described one rule as consistent with the Second Amendment of the Constitution because, among other things, the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment is a collective right. The FAA now withdraws that characterization and amends its description.”)

Recently, I’ve reported on two complaints made to the DOJ Civil Rights Division, one about an Illinois Supreme Court Judge with blatant financial and political conflicts of interest who ruled to uphold the state’s “assault weapons” ban, and more recently, one asking them to investigate civil rights violations inherent in the state’s Firearms Owner Identification card (FOID) requirement. DOJ showed deliberate indifference to the first complaint. The second is still outstanding at this writing.

I don’t hold my experiences out as unique. Every 2A writer, blogger, and video influencer out there, at least the ones who produce original reports and ideas, can cite examples of their own. The point of sharing personal reflections is to illustrate how trying to get the attention needed to bring change is an ineffective approach unless recognized and organized. “Gun rights” groups and influencers are all apprised of these efforts, but invariably place their own agendas and interests first, and the ones with the loudest voices and most connections are the ones that get on the administration’s radar—meaning worthy alternative priorities and approaches never make it to the top of the pile.   

So, what’s the solution?

Democrats know. It’s to organize. A viable way to present a coordinated front representing gun owner interests and having the president’s ear is by the White House replacing Joe Biden’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention with an Office for Second Amendment Protection. ATF’s newly appointed Chief Counsel, Robert Leider, “a Scalia Law professor & Second Amendment legal expert” per Gun Owners of America, would be the logical choice to act as liaison for  a group of select prominent advocacy and legal influencers introduced as “Gun Owners for Trump” during the presidential campaign.

They should hold regular, publicly accessible online meetings (save for executive sessions where advisable), serving as informed advisors on gun issues, helping shape agenda priorities, including ATF practices and rules oversight, federal and state bill analyses, legal strategies, responses, and action items. They should establish a means to report their efforts and progress to us “ordinary” gun owners, providing a conduit to communicate and make our hopes, concerns, and objections known. Leider, in turn, would act as the voice of the administration, making sure the right administration functionaries would attend meetings, and reporting group recommendations and concerns to Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and Donald Trump so there would be no more surprises.

Such an office would be an invaluable safeguard. It’s also the only organized, consistent, and coordinated way to say something when we see something.

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