I probably shouldn’t post this. I’m only typing it here because I’m too lazy to open my word processor. So if you’re reading this, don’t shoot. It’s just a rant. I’ll go have my breakfast now, and get over it.
Reading a post at Uncle’s place, I came upon this and this.
…I doubt that any form 4 has taken 18 months during this administration; If one has it’s a statistical anomaly. If you look at NFA tracker’s trend graph*, and add in the delays noted in the last letter the BATFE issued regarding E-Forms**, you’ll see that peak transfer times were roughly 330-360 days from the date check was cashed, plus another ~90 days (~56 days for data entry delay, 30 for proof reading/error correction, remainder for postal delays), for a total of 420-450 days, or roughly 14-15 months (this also assumes that…[ed note: oh, shut the f*ck up!]
…
Seems to me the only real advantage is time savings. Like most Americans people want their paperwork approved a week BEFORE they submit it. It comes down to the bane of modern America. ME ME ME! Now Now NOW!!!
This in a discussion of how long it takes to get a tax stamp for a legal SBR. Note the trend?
No, probably neither of these guys works for BATFE. They’re just NFA geeks.
[rant]HOW could a person POSSIBLY deal with an NFA transfer without coming away with the irrepressible urge to spit on his hands, raise the black flag, and start slitting throats? How?[/rant]
I saw the same thing during a brief time when I hung out with a bunch of ham enthusiasts. The radios, I mean. Not the pork. Had to back away slowly, breathe deep and chant a mantra reminding myself that their lives are as valuable as mine. So I should not kill them all.
It seems that any time there’s a group of people clustered around some activity regarded by our masters as a privilege requiring a license, there will always arise a subset of those same people whose primary passion is to defend the privilege from hoi polloi. Seriously, there are totally hams who will call the cops on anybody they find operating on their restricted frequencies without a license or without using established on-air protocols. Not only will they do it – they delight in doing it. They police the bands panting for the chance to do it. They brag about having done it.
Quislings, one and all. But they don’t see it that way.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise to me, to find such people in the gun world. Let’s face it – thanks to the distorted market for restricted firearms, the NFA registry is a pretty damned rarefied place. Full-auto, especially, jeez, you’ve gotta be rich to get into that. And you’ve got to be prepared to jump through the kind of hoops that would simply make my head explode. So naturally it becomes the sort of hobby that attracts a subset of special snowflakes who actually partner with ATF. They don’t want the unwashed involved. They’ll use the force of law to keep them away. And they’ll see absolutely nothing wrong with that.
(Disclaimer – this should not be taken as an indictment of everybody with legal full-autos, SBRs, suppressors, or things that go boom. I know at least three such people whom I regard as fellow outlaws. Ya do what ya gotta do. I’m just talking about … well, those of you who have read this far know who I’m talking about. Compliance with a law, when non-compliance would complicate your life to an unacceptable degree, does not imply that you think the law is a good thing.)
Hell, I’ve seen the same attitude among people holding such plebian “privileges” as driver’s licenses. Somebody gets busted for driving (safely!) without a license, and somebody else is sure to react with schadenfreude. Makes no sense to me, but there it is.
This isn’t going anywhere, or making some valuable point, I’m just ranting. Several years ago I touched on this sort of thing in regard to concealed-carry.
I will be free if I have to break every law in the history of jurisprudence to do it. I will be free if I have to spend the rest of my life in prison to do it. I have no part with people who beg and plead for the privilege of exercising rights they were born with, people who pride themselves on how very law-abiding they are and count that as a measure of their “goodness,” people who kiss the hands that rivet on their chains.
Guess my attitude hasn’t changed since then.
“Guess my attitude hasn’t changed since then.”
heh, when you’ve found the right atitude, why should it change?
clarence
Well said.
Yeah, Joel… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 🙂
I “obey” a lot of stupid “laws” I certainly don’t accept as legitimate, but it’s mostly because I’m no longer young, strong and flexible in body. Then again…. when we get to the point where we have nothing much left to lose it can get very interesting. I’m almost looking forward to it. 🙂
Remember, all a license is is permission from the state to break the law. The reason why people who get the license and then try and turn in the Unholy is they remember all the hoops they had to jump through to get theirs. Misery loves company after all.
Not sure how many of them are miserable, but I do know that many of them hate competition. It is just so much easier to get the state to destroy your competition by fiat… rather than have to do the hard work of providing value for value.
And I spent 30 years as a “licensed” nurse, so I talked to a lot of them. I was a minority of one most of the paces I worked, and the happiest day of my life was the night I tore up that hated “license.” Felt as if a load of bricks came off my back when I retired.
Yeah, there are still a lot of people out there that use government like a blunt instrument.
To them, the jackboots and SWAT teams are a feature, not a bug.
These people are the enemy, regardless of whether their hobbies align with yours or not. Just because a guy owns a gun and shoots it doesn’t mean he’s my ally, especially if his second hobby is turning the BATFE loose on people.
Reeks of “only-one-itis” and there’s very little I hate more than “only-one-itis.”
I follow laws because guys in funny costumes will abuse me if I don’t. I’d love to have police credentials because I could carry more places with less rick of jail time, but I doubt I could stomach buddying up with cops to do it.
here on airstrip one, where legally owning a gun is a “privilege”, requiring forms to be filled, references sought, access to medical records to be given to cops, fees to be paid, safes to be bought and your home, person and the places you intend to use each gun you request permission and give “good reason” for wanting, inspected by plod…
There have been no end of quislings seeking to raise the barriers to entry: training courses, membership of societies, insurance… Back in 1987-88 the British NRA were all too happy to throw owners of semi auto centrefire rifles under the bus, as was the national farmers union, and a lot of our bird and deer shooters.
The nearby village, once a community of small hill farms (never a happy place, so far as I can tell, sheep on un fenced moorland and little tennanted fields scattered around on the same basis as medieval strips used to be – so everyone got a mix of good and bad, but which meant that for one man to get his heifers to a field he had to go through a neighbours field with a bull in it or vice versa, an uncleaned ditch in one field led to boggy patches in his neighbour’s, and pity help someone who was late or early for his turn to water his cows at the village water troughs and had them fight with the neighbours herd… non of those made for friendly interactions with neighbours)
Now it’s mostly commuters, trying to buy a willo the wisp aspiration for “country living” and the monthly snitch n bitch meeting organized by the cops and held in the village hall (appropriately for moral busy bodies, it’s a former methodist chapel) seems to find no end of sad individuals all too willing to grass up their neighbours for an untidy garden a noisy pet, or for burning something that offends their noses.
The only thing that I come to the notice of the chubby boys and girls in blue for, is having a license for guns. I’ve held that licence, without incident, for longer than most of the cops I meet, have been on this planet.
If I had my time again,
would I bother with bringing myself to attention by applying for a license?
If the license I do have was to be taken away, would I loose my interest in guns and shooting? or would I seek out the people who don’t ask permission?
They’re questions that I’ve been asking myself more and more often. I don’t have any answers.
See the recent story about calls for flogging and a ten-year sentence for an Iranian woman who kissed a man on the cheek. Said calls come from an Iranian female student group.