Aug. 10, 2023 - Epoch Times
10:47
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Good evening, and right before we dive in, I would be remiss to not tell you that the Epoch Times is having an awesome sale and subscriptions. | |
| Just 25 cents a week for the entirety of the year, which works itself out to just be a dollar a month. | |
| And so, if you are sick and tired of all the censorship on this lovely platform, and all the other platforms as well, and you're looking for a source of honest news... | |
| And maybe you've been considering subscribing to the Epoch Times. | |
| Well, now's a great chance to try. | |
| I'll throw a link down into the description box below. | |
| It'll be right there at the very top. | |
| You can click on that link and head on over to the sale page where you can try the Epoch Times for yourself for, again, just a single dollar a month. | |
| I'm sure you'll love it. | |
| And now jumping into today's main topic. | |
| Just yesterday, in a split 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a bit of a, you can say, strange ruling in regards to ghost guns. | |
| Specifically, this new decision from the court will keep in place the Biden administration's regulations for these so-called ghost guns while a large-scale ghost gun lawsuit is playing itself out in federal court. | |
| However, in order to understand the significance of this decision and what it means moving forward, we need to break down exactly what this case is all about. | |
| And so, let's start at the very beginning. | |
| Now, in case you don't know, a ghost gun is essentially a pejorative term. | |
| It's used by gun control advocates in order to describe a homemade gun which does not have a serial number, and therefore it cannot be tracked by the authorities. | |
| Now, these ghost guns can be, for the most part, 3D printed at somebody's house. | |
| All they need is a 3D printer, as well as the blueprints, which usually can be found for free online. | |
| However, there are some parts of the gun that cannot be 3D printed as of yet. | |
| Here's, for instance, how the process is described in a Trace article. | |
| Quote, 3D printed guns vary a lot. | |
| Some models, like the 3D printed gun company Defense Distributed's Liberator, can be almost entirely made on a 3D printer. | |
| Others require many additional parts, which are often metal. | |
| For example, many 3D printed gun blueprints focus on a weapon's lower receiver, which is basically the chassis of a firearm. | |
| Under federal law, it's the only gun part that requires a federal background check to purchase from a licensed dealer. | |
| To subvert regulators, some people print lower receivers at home and finish their guns using parts that can be purchased without a background check. | |
| Metal barrels, for example, or factory buttstocks. | |
| Many gun retailers sell kits, which include all the components necessary to assemble a gun at home. | |
| Now, in practice, these gun kits that you can purchase online look something like this. | |
| It's pretty much everything except for the lower receiver. | |
| And so basically, you would purchase that kit online, you would print the lower receiver at home, and then you would assemble the gun right there at your house. | |
| And so, because these 3D printed guns are made outside of the traditional supply chain and they don't require background checks, they are effectively invisible to the law enforcement agencies across the country. | |
| They have no idea that this gun exists and or who owns it. | |
| And as you can imagine, the federal government is not too thrilled with this loss of control. | |
| And along that line, in August of last year, the Biden administration's ATF, which is the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Agency, they issued a new policy directive wherein they quite literally redefined certain terms within the Gun Control Act of 1968 In order to regain some of this control, the agency basically said that moving forward, they will interpret the word firearms as it's written in the law to also include partially manufactured frames and receivers. | |
| Essentially, they recognize that they don't have the authority under the law, and so they redefine the words in the law in order to regain that authority. | |
| It's a, you can say, pretty clever move. | |
| And so, with these new definitions in place, the ATF began seeking to regulate these ghost gun kits just like they do traditional guns. | |
| With the new regulation in place, it now requires, for one, anyone who buys one of these ghost gun kits to undergo a background check, just as if they were buying a commercially made gun. | |
| And secondly, the new regulations would also require anyone who sells the ghost gun kits to mark those components with serial numbers so that they can ultimately be tracked by the U.S. government. | |
| However, almost immediately after this new policy guidance was issued, a large lawsuit was filed against the ATF. Eventually, the case grew larger and larger, and several other plaintiffs joined the lawsuit as well, including several companies like Black Hawk Manufacturing Group, Polymer 80, and Defense Distributed. | |
| They all collectively sued the ATF as well as the Biden administration, making the argument that they do not have the authority to regulate these particular kits. | |
| Meaning, That if the government wants to regulate these new kits, a new law would need to be passed and put on the books. | |
| You can't just redefine the terms in the existing law to give yourself new powers. | |
| On the flip side, however, the government, they were justifying this move on the grounds of public safety. | |
| Here's, for instance, what U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said when he first unveiled this new rule to the public. | |
| This rule will make it harder for criminals and other prohibited persons to obtain untraceable guns. | |
| It will help to ensure that law enforcement officers can retrieve the information they need to solve crimes. | |
| And it will help reduce the number of untraceable firearms flooding our communities. | |
| Furthermore, the U.S. Solicitor General made another type of argument in these court briefings, comparing a ghost gun kit to an IKEA furniture kit. | |
| Here's what she wrote in a legal briefing to the court. | |
| Every speaker of English would recognize that a tax on sales of bookshelves Applies to IKEA when it sells boxes of parts and the tools and instructions for assembling them into bookshelves. | |
| With the argument here being that the same logic should apply to gun kits. | |
| However, after a year of legal back and forth, about a month ago, the ATF actually lost the case. | |
| On July 5th, which is almost exactly a month ago, Judge Reed O'Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, well, she issued an injunction against the federal government, finding that their regulation violated the existing laws that were currently on the books. | |
| Specifically, in her order, she found that, And as such, this rule by the ATF was overturned. | |
| However, the ATF, they then filed an appeal with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. | |
| As a part of that appeal, they asked the court to overturn the injunction and allow the regulations against Ghost Guns to stay in place while the case is making its way through the appeals process. | |
| However, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, they also ruled against the ATF. Specifically, just two weeks ago, quote, However, there was a twist here, which we'll get into right after I introduce the sponsor of today's episode by showing you this little piece of money. | |
| Or rather, I should say that this is fake money being printed into oblivion by those geniuses over in Washington, D.C., And so before they completely obliterate your life savings, what I recommend you do is to convert that fake money into real money, which is physical gold and silver. | |
| And the best company to use is the sponsor of today's episode, American Hartford Gold, who also happens to be my own personal gold and silver bullion dealer. | |
| Now, American Hartford Gold is one of the best companies in the game. | |
| Besides myself, they have thousands of other five-star ratings across the country. | |
| They have an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. | |
| They ship quickly, directly to your doorstep. | |
| Their product listings are awesome. | |
| They're stacked with great options of gold and silver, bullion and coins. | |
| And best of all, They have amazing customer service. | |
| When you pick up the phone and call them, you feel good because not only do they have friendly staff, but they're a patriotic company that actually sponsors a program like ours. | |
| So you feel good knowing you support a company that supports the truth getting out into the wider American audience. | |
| And so calling them up is a no-brainer. | |
| But best of all, if you tell them that Roman sent you, they will throw in up to $5,000 worth of free silver with your first purchase. | |
| So giving them a call is a real no-brainer. | |
| So hit them up. | |
| It's 866-242-2352. | |
| That's 866-242-2352. | |
| Or you can simply text the word Roman, R-O-M-A-N, Roman, to 65532. | |
| Roman to 65532. | |
| Of course, all their details will be down in the description box below. | |
| And now let's head on back to the studio. | |
| Meaning that this appeals court found that the government cannot enforce this rule of theirs while the appeals process plays out. | |
| However, the ATF had one more trick up their sleeve. | |
| They filed an emergency petition all the way up with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking them to allow this ghost gun rule to stay in place while the case is working its way through the appeals process. | |
| And in a bit of a shocking move, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to do so. | |
| Specifically, In this very short, one-page decision of theirs, they did not actually provide any sort of a rationale for their decision. | |
| However, in this order, they did leave the door open for this case to make it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court through a writ of certirari, which is a legal phrase meaning appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. | |
| And so, there you have it. | |
| The ghost gun case continues to play itself out in court going through the appeals process, but as it does so, the U.S. government can continue to mandate background checks for people who buy ghost gun kits online, and it can also mandate that these kits include a serial number on them, at least for the time being. | |
| However, only time will tell whether these rules are in fact constitutional. | |
| If you'd like to go through any of the details that we went through in today's episode, I'll throw all those links down into the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure, which I should mention is that description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you take a moment to smash. | |
| And I'd also love to know your thoughts on this whole issue. | |
| Do you think that the ATF overstepped their authority by just redefining the words in the law? | |
| After all, the law does say the term firearm, and the people who passed that law back in 1968 knew exactly what they meant when they wrote it. | |
| But on the flip side, do you think that this IKEA argument is valid? | |
| After all, these ghost gun kits are meant to be assembled into guns, even if they're missing a few parts. | |
| So do you think that this justifies the government regulating them just like guns? | |
| Or perhaps a third option, do you think that the government should not be regulating gun ownership at all, and that doing so is a violation of the shall-not-be-infringed language of the Second Amendment? | |
| Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below. | |
| I'll be reading them later tonight as well as well into the week. | |
| And then lastly, as I mentioned at the very top of the episode as well, if you would like to try the Epoch Times for yourself, if you'd like to get unlimited access to everything that we publish, all the articles, all the infographics, all the shows, movies, and documentaries over on Epic TV, basically everything out there. | |
| Well, now's a great time with the awesome sale that we're running. | |
| I'll throw a link to that sale page. | |
| It'll be right there at the top of the description box below. | |
| You can just click on that link and use it to sign up for just a single dollar a month and try the Epic Times for yourself. | |
| I'm sure you'll love it. | |
| Again, that link is right there at the top of the description box below. | |
| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times. |
Export Selection