The long and short is that Wrenn’s Maxims are semi-automatic (i.e., not machine guns). The ATF is trying to convince a judge and prosecution team that the upper receivers (which per past ATF rulings aren’t even firearms) are machine guns. Wrenn’s trial begins Monday. Eric Larson has a lot of detail on the case over at Subguns:

Some years back, after receiving a dozen or so of the aforementioned “ATF Letter Ruling” documents, and noticing their seriously contradictory statements, I decided to memoralize them by putting them into the permanent Hearing Records of the House Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government Appropriations. I won’t fatigue any of you by repeating what they stated; you can see the whole obscene mess of them in the “Resources” section of www.nfaoa.org that lists my Congressional statements and testimonies.

It is less well known that after carefully studying these letters, written by 3 different people (all of them top ATF executives, including the then-ATF Director John W. Magaw), logic forced me to an inevitable conclusion. Namely, either the people who wrote those letters were professionally incompetent, or they were deliberately misrepresenting the law.

The ATF has changed the rules on a whim apparently and is prosecuting based on that. For more on what spawned this, see here and here.

Eric Concludes with:

Finally, I think all of you who have taken the time to read this far must be at least as amused, horrified, concerned and tired of “ATF Letter Ruling” documents being misused by ATF to express your concerns to your Congressional representatives.

I know, it sounds lame, “express your concerns to your Congressional representatives.” But I tell you what—think about the scattered posts on Subguns by the growing number of folks who HAVE taken the time to involve their Congressional delegation in a valid complaint about and against ATF, and the number of posts that have touted how quickly positive results were achieved.

ATF is not immune to political pressure. It is evident from the variety of activism about NFA and/or NFRTR issues that has emerged in 2005, as noted at the beginning of this post, that people are much less afraid of ATF than in the past; have realized that ATF cannot stop legitimate activism through established political channels of representation; and that, indeed, the Congress can be and does get aroused, and when aroused, can and will do something. YOU can make that something—er, those somethings, there’s lots on the plate(s) here, including stuff I’ve not mentioned—happen much quicker if you will only take the time to participate in the political process necessary to make it happen.

Contact your congress critter. It is seriously time to reign in the ATF.

Posted in uncategorized on November 4th, 2005 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |