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Feb. 28, 2023 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
23:11
Gun Owners of America talks to Mike Adams about halting ATF overreach...
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Welcome to the Health Ranger Report here on Brighteon.tv and Brighteon.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon, the free speech platform where we can speak freely about issues that matter.
And today we're joined by Ben Sanderson from Gun Owners of America.
Gunowners.org is the website and he is the legislative policy assistant We have him on because of this critical issue of the ATF now trying to criminalize potentially millions of Americans who legally purchased stabilizing braces for their AR platform pistols and other pistols over the last several years based on the ATF's own recommendation that this was perfectly legal, and I own some of these as well.
And so what are we going to do about this?
Well, Gun Owners of America has some answers, and here to give us those answers is Mr.
Sanderson.
Thank you, Ben, if I may call you Ben, but thank you for joining me.
It's great to have you on.
Thanks for having me on, Mike.
It's a great opportunity to always speak with plenty of new people and spread the message about what the ATF's doing and how this is going to criminalize up to millions of people for simply owning a piece of plastic.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's a really important way to put it.
Now, I think most of our listeners are familiar with the stabilizing brace situation, but just for any who are new to the topic, Could you just give us a quick brief of what happened, you know, the publishing of the rule, the 120-day period, and what is Gun Owners of America doing to fight this right now?
Of course.
So this process started about a year ago when President Biden asked the ATF to really look into these accessories because he thought that they were allowing people to evade certain loopholes.
But the bigger old purpose is for him to come after your guns.
The thing about these stabilizing braces is there's nearly 40 million of them, according to a CRS report.
That's up to 40 million people that are going to be felons now simply for owning something that the ATF has approved for the last decade.
It was originally designed to help veterans be able to shoot their AR-15s one-handed due to either being a paraplegic or such. - Thank you.
Yeah, exactly.
And then a lot of us in the firearms, the Second Amendment community, we found that this was also a convenient format for us to be able to legally carry firearms for self-defense purposes in a more compact format.
And a lot of people that I know are veterans, and they do have shoulder injuries or elbow injuries or wrist injuries, and they need these stabilizing braces.
Not everybody does, but the ATF has already issued multiple opinions, haven't they?
Is that correct?
Yep, you're correct as well.
There was an approval letter that said that simply putting it up to one shoulder does not constitute a redesign of the weapon, and therefore wouldn't make it a national firearms weapon or an NFA firearm, which would need a $200 tax registration.
But that's what they're doing now, is they're saying that because certain people have put it up to their shoulders, they're calling it a short-billed rifle, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine per item.
these without having properly registered them.
And the insane thing about this is a lot of new gun owners, which we've seen over the last few years, went and bought these pistol ARs or pistol firearms because they were lighter, they're easier to control.
These are popular amongst shorter people like myself or women who aren't as strong enough or don't have necessarily all the strength to hold a full 16-inch barrel rifle.
I noticed that as well.
Yeah, exactly.
A lot of women found these very useful because they don't necessarily, many of them don't have the upper body muscle mass to hold a full-length 16-inch barrel AR, but they can use an AR pistol in this configuration, maybe with even a 10.5 barrel or what have you.
They can use it effectively for self-defense or home defense.
And why does the ATF want to prevent women from being able to effectively defend themselves?
That's a whole question.
So what's your answer to that, Ben?
I mean, why does the ATF seem to be really discriminatory in this policy, discriminating against women or smaller stature people, for example?
It's because they don't actually care about them.
They don't care about your natural right, your God-given right to own a firearm for self-defense or for whatever you want.
In fact, like you were talking about, being able to discriminate against women or people with disabilities.
In the final rule that they published, they got a lot of comments asking how this would be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
And their response to that simply was, Well, we're part of the federal government, so we don't have to pay attention to that.
It's insane to think that we're willing to charge people with prison with a huge fine simply for owning what is essentially an aesthetic choice.
It's the difference between a 15.9-inch barrel and a 16-inch barrel in a lot of these cases.
to make the weapon deadlier.
It doesn't increase the lethality of the weapon at all.
It is simply a choice and the ATF is coming after you.
It reduces the muzzle velocity of the weapon, by the way.
I mean, a shorter barrel reduces the muzzle velocity for most of these rounds because they're loaded for a 16 inch barrel, so they're not going to have the full acceleration, right?
So actual muzzle velocity would be lower, so there's less kinetic energy coming out of a lot of these pistols.
Is that a point that anybody pays attention to?
Well, it's something that we've brought up in the past when talking to members of Congress and their staff.
It's, this doesn't make the bullet fire faster.
This doesn't make it deadlier.
This isn't going to make it go faster at all.
Right.
But the ATF doesn't care about that.
They're more interested in taking these firearms away from people.
They're more interested in restricting your Second Amendment rights than they are about any of the facts.
So talk to us about the legislative efforts, or I'm sorry, the lawsuit efforts by Gun Owners of America.
And for those of you who want to support this important group, GOA, just go to gunowners.org.
And I strongly advocate this group.
I think this is the most effective group out there on a national basis that's fighting for your Second Amendment rights.
But I know lawsuits have been filed, and I know the state of Texas is involved with some various actions as well.
Can you give us a quick overview of what Gun Owners is doing To fight this and perhaps get an injunction issued.
Well, I appreciate the support, Mike.
It's always awesome to hear about our supporters.
For the lawsuit, we're actually filed in the Fifth Circuit in Texas.
We did file with Ken Paxton, the Attorney General for Texas.
And our lawsuit is the most complete.
We go over not only the Administrative Procedures Act and how it's wrong there and how the rule is unconstitutional on that front, But we also attack it on a slew of other issues, mainly that this is an attack on your Second Amendment rights, it's unconstitutional, and so is the NFA as a precursor tax to one of your rights.
Yeah, well, the entire NFA needs to be revoked and kind of reworked, I would argue, but that's for a later day.
What are, in your opinion, What do you think the chances are of this being stopped before the 120-day period is up, after which millions of Americans will be transformed into criminal felons overnight?
Are you optimistic about this lawsuit or even some other lawsuits that have been filed?
Well, I'm very optimistic about our lawsuit in Texas.
Not only is it the best, but the Fifth Circuit recently ruled on Chevron deference, in which the government is seen as the subject matter expert on all their rules, and so the court takes that opinion.
That was recently struck down in a different case in the Fifth Circuit.
It was Cargill versus ATF. And so that's super important, and one of the reasons we chose to file in the Fifth Circuit was to be able to avoid the Chevron deference, which is still...
Yeah, the Fifth Circuit, I think, definitely has the best chance of working to defend the Second Amendment here.
Of course, whatever decision comes from the Fifth Circuit would be challenged and appealed by the ATF. Is there a sense that this is going to end up before the Supreme Court at some point?
I would have to talk to my lawyers about that.
But we're optimistic that we'll get an injunction and a great decision right there to stop the rule from being enforced.
And if it takes time through the courts, so long as we are able to still own these pistol-braced firearms, it could go to the Supreme Court.
It might, because a lot of places have been fighting against Bruin, even though that was recently given down by the Supreme Court.
So yes, we do expect it to be appealed in the Fifth Circuit by the federal government.
However, as long as we get the preliminary injunction or the temporary restraining order so that the rule can't be enforced, we're more than happy to fight this all the way up to the Supreme Court so long as gun owners can keep their pistol-braced firearms.
That's really great to hear because a lot of gun owners across America, including myself, right now we are waiting, obviously, to see what happens here.
I still have AR pistols with braces attached and I'm just watching to see what happens.
How many days do we have left of this 120 days, by the way?
I think we're about...
Two months currently.
I haven't been keeping as close to track as I should be.
Okay.
I'm hoping it's not that far along, but I think, I mean, there's definitely a few weeks have passed, right?
Maybe three weeks or something, maybe four, I don't know.
But the thing is...
We are responsible gun owners.
That is, we follow the law.
I mean, myself and my audience and so on.
We never advocate illegal things.
Don't go get full auto triggers and drop them in.
Don't go have illegal suppressors and things like that.
So we want to follow the law.
Does Gun Owners of America have any advice for people if that 120 days...
And there hasn't been an injunction.
Is there any official advice like, oh, just take the braces off the pistols or anything like that from gun owners?
Well, it certainly depends on what kind of pistol you have.
For an AR-15, there are...
The rule is not 100% clear.
They've muddied it a lot compared to the proposed rule last year, which we read over in the summer and gave our comments to.
They had a point system in the proposed rule.
I remember that point system, yeah.
It was kind of like trying to solve a seventh grade math word problem.
Like a train leaves Philadelphia at 45 miles per hour.
It was crazy.
But then they scrapped the whole point system, right?
Mm-hmm.
And they've changed it over to these objective characteristics, which in themselves are quite vague.
So it's hard to know how to be in compliance with that.
Even it's deliberately made so.
One of our lawyers, Stephen Stamboulier, was talking about it in which he has a pistol, which he says if he took the brace off it and the buffer tube, which is necessary to the function of the firearm, he can't shoulder that.
That wouldn't be a pistol for him.
But for someone like me, who is a lot shorter and has shorter arms than him, there's a chance it could be considered a legal SBR because my length of pull is a lot shorter, so it could be able to go into my shoulder pocket.
You mean just a buffer tube?
They said that they would not include a buffer tube.
However, they...
They also mention a caveat in which an ATF agent has discretion over whether or not they could consider an illegal SBR. Wow, so basically they can just say, we think, we're just going to call it an SBR no matter what.
They have discretion to say that.
Oh, yes, they do.
That's just crazy.
I mean, that sounds like, frankly, absolute tyranny or insanity.
I mean, no matter what you have, they can just say, you know, technically that, well, we think that pistol self-identifies as an SBR. Right.
That's a good way to put it, yeah.
Yeah.
So it's like firearms transgenderism or something.
I don't know what they would call it, but it's weird and it's highly disturbing because, again, gun owners in America, like myself and others, we take pride in complying with the law.
We go out and get the permits.
We get the training.
We carry responsibly.
Yeah.
And we are not lawbreakers, and we don't buy illegal things, but then we buy something that's legal, and then they say, oh, we're going to make that illegal.
That just seems grossly unconstitutional and unfair.
Oh yeah, 100%.
I mean, even when I'm talking to new gun owners who bought a firearm for self-defense during the COVID pandemic, they don't pay attention to this as closely as we do.
They're not reading through these rules.
They're not looking for document drops on the Federal Register.
So a lot of these people could unwittingly become felons simply for buying something that they preferred, that was the best choice for them to defend their family and themselves.
looters and such during a scary time.
But now, because the government has arbitrarily decided, no, this is not legal anymore, even after a decade of letters and decisions, they could, like I said, become criminals.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, we're going to move on to another topic with you here, but will you keep us posted about, well, I mean, I guess we can read your press announcement at gunowners.org, but you have our producer's information.
Please contact us if there's some emergency alert that you need to get out.
We'll help you get that out.
Let's move on to the FFL issue.
You had mentioned to me before we started here, and I've seen other stories about this as well, the ATF is pursuing a zero-tolerance policy where it seems like any typo or honest mistake on the part of an FFL, which is a gun retailer or gun dealer, That transfers firearms to purchasers with background checks, if required by law, that the ATF is just running around trying to shut down FFL dealers all across the country.
Can you tell us about what's happening there?
Of course.
Yeah, Gun Owners of America, myself and my team, recently received leaked ATF documents talking about this new zero tolerance policy.
Essentially what it is, is the Biden administration instructed the ATF to look more closely at FFLs and look for tiny mistakes.
They're insane things, like a paperwork mistake in which someone put down the wrong number or put down a zero instead of an O.
These FFLs are now being punished with that for the most severe punishment, which in the past, usually what the ATF did was give a warning letter or a warning conference in which they told the FFLs essentially, hey, you made a mistake.
You're not in compliance with the law.
Here's how you can improve it.
And this is us telling you, come back.
Do the right thing.
And FFLs more often than not chose to comply with that and said, hey, yeah, you're right.
This was an innocent mistake.
This was a mistake on our half.
Let's fix it and let's move forward and let's come back into compliance with the law.
But like you said, now these innocent mistakes are being used to shut down plenty of FFLs around the country.
Just this year, there were 92 revocations.
That's the most since 2008.
Yeah, I know people who have even turned in their FFL license or they've allowed it to expire simply because they know this is coming.
Well, it's already happening.
And they don't want to be terrorized, I guess, by the ATF or even threatened.
The ATF can threaten criminal charges against FFLs for some of these innocent mistakes.
And there are FFL dealers who are saying, you know, enough is enough.
We're going to get out of the business.
I've seen that happen.
So not only the 92, I think you said, that have been ordered shut down by the ATF, but there are no doubt hundreds across the country who have just thrown in the towel and said that this is too much to deal with.
Have you heard that too?
We have, yes.
And this really is a two-pronged attack by the ATF. Not only is it an attack on Second Amendment rights and people's ability by these firearms to be able to practice the Second Amendment and shoot and defend themselves, but also, interestingly enough, These records, the records of these shutdown FFLs go to the Out of Business Records Keeping Center, which the ATF runs, and the ATF has now turned into an illegal registry.
They have it digital, they have it searchable.
It's an insane collection and mis-overstep of government authority.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, and they have all my purchases in that system as well, even though I bought with a concealed carry permit that doesn't require, you know, an FBI check, because, you know, I have a concealed carry.
I've already passed all those checks, but now...
An FFL dealer that I did business with did go out of business and they sent all the records to ATF as the ATF requires.
So exactly right.
They have a full database now of records which normally would have been kept more private or more local.
So that is a huge concern.
It is a nationwide kind of a stealth registry taking place.
You meet with lawmakers, as I understand it.
What are you hearing from lawmakers about this?
And let me set the tone.
Because of the defund the police movement that's been pushed by a lot of Democrats, especially across America, the streets are more violent in many areas.
And I've even seen, frankly, more Democrats buying firearms.
I've seen gay groups purchasing firearms.
I've seen more women especially purchasing firearms.
I've seen more people of color purchasing firearms.
A lot of black Americans are buying firearms for self-defense and self-protection, not to carry out crimes, but to defend their families and their communities, which is their right to do so.
So how is it going in conversations with lawmakers about the need for self-defense?
Well, we're super excited.
This has been a great year.
We've really been able to push forward a lot of great legislative ideas.
If you look at last year, or sorry, in the past few years, it wouldn't have been possible to do a lot of what we're doing.
Just to start off the list, in response to the pistol brace ban, we are helping with the SHORT Act, the Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today Act, and that would target the heart of the NFA. That targets short bail rifles, short bail shotguns, and any other weapons.
So, While our lawsuit is great, it only works on this specific rule.
To prevent it from ever happening again, whether it's Biden or a different anti-gun president from trying the exact same thing of banning pistol braces or banning AR-15s, we need to go straight after the NFA. And that's exactly why Senator Marshall's bill is so great and the House Companion Bill by Congressman Andrew Clyde.
What would that look like if the NFA is reformed or revoked?
I mean, what kind of system would be in place instead of that, you think?
So, specifically for the Short Act, what it would do is just get rid of the requirement that someone has to register a shorter-than-16-inch barrel rifle with the ATF, and the same with short-billed shotguns and any other weapons.
So, it doesn't necessarily take out machine guns and destructive devices yet.
It's very limited in its approach to fighting solely the pistol-brace ban, but it would turn them into essentially the same thing as going down to an FFL and picking out a new rifle, a 16-inch rifle.
Right, right.
And again, that rule, I mean, what was the original year of the NFA? It was so long ago, and it seems so obsolete at this point.
You recall the year?
It was in 1934, the National Firearms Act.
And it was originally made to regulate pistols, but then they looked at it and they realized they couldn't get that.
So they left in all these other choices as well.
That's really something.
Well, I'm very happy that Gun Owners of America is out there fighting for this legislatively and communicating to lawmakers.
What about Democrat lawmakers?
Traditionally, of course, they're anti-gun, but are some Democrats more open than they were before because of all the violent crime across America?
Well, we here at Gun Owners America, we're nonpartisan.
All we care about is how pro-gun are you?
We talk to Democrat lawmakers all the time, whether it's sending out alerts or trying to give them information about what's going on.
Specifically, I can reference the assault weapons ban of 2021, where...
When we gave out information, it was, hey, this isn't going to do what you think.
This isn't going to reduce violent crime.
We had several Democrat lawmakers vote against it.
And I'm not going to claim that our influence helped at all, but I will say that there are some Democratic lawmakers out there that aren't going full anti-gun like it seems like a majority of the party is.
Yeah, that's really important because, you know...
The data are quite clear.
More guns equals less crime, and that is guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens.
The more armed citizens you have carrying every day, the less crime you have.
That's just a fact.
So if you're anti-crime, you've got to be pro-Second Amendment, that's for sure.
Well, Ben, it's great to have you here.
Are there any final thoughts or words or programs you want to share with our people before we wrap this up?
Well, thanks for having me, Mike.
Yeah, I would encourage you to check out our Instagram and all of our Facebooks as well as the website.
We do a YouTube show in which we talk about these gun laws as they happen.
I'm actually the host of it.
It's the Minuteman Moment.
But again, thank you, Mike.
I really appreciate this opportunity.
Well, absolutely, Ben.
We appreciate you.
We appreciate everything that your organization is doing and the leadership there and also just the courage to do what is right, necessary for the Second Amendment and self-defense and not get mired in internal politics or what have you.
We love your group and we really thank you for joining us.
So folks, that's Mr.
Ben Sanderson from Gun Owners of America.
The website is gunowners.org.
Feel free to share this interview everywhere.
And support your Second Amendment, or you will lose it.
Purchase firearms, learn how to use them safely and responsibly, and carry where legal.
Prepare yourself for the kind of society that seems to be getting worse out there.
You're going to need your firearms more than ever before, I think, to keep communities safe and secure.
So thank you for watching.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon.com.
We appreciate you.
God bless America.
Take care, everybody.
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