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Quoted from a thread discussing the recent BATFE raid on KT Ordnance, a manufacturer of 80% finished receivers¹ from which private individuals possessing the necessary tools, knowledge and skills may lawfully build firearms at home for their own use, a practice which BATFE's own site acknowledges is fully legal:
You wanna know what's wrong with federal law enforcement?
They're all a bunch of Tim McVeighs, that's what.
They all probably start out in their careers wanting to do something good. They want to make folks safer, defeat terrorism, defend the Constitution, whatever. Just like Tim McVeigh, they start out wanting to do good; they maybe start out being outraged by something that they rightfully should have been outraged about. They start out earnest.
But then they get caught up in the "us vs. them" mentality -- just like Tim McVeigh. They are so focused on winning the game, they forget that it isn't a game. They forget that the people they kick around are real people with real rights. They forget that the lives they destroy are real lives, equal in worth to their own. They forget that they themselves are human and capable of making mistakes. They forget the presumption of innocence.
With this mentality, anything becomes justifiable. Nothing is out-of-bounds, because it's all for a good cause.
I guess, when the President himself thinks this way, how can we expect his underlings to be any better?
Other related interesting reading: this JPFO interview with Len Savage, and this letter in which BATFE asserts with a straight face that a shoelace is, in fact, a machinegun. On this basis, a wooden match must also be a machinegun, because there used to be a fairly well-known trick in the British armed forces which utilized a wooden matchstick to cause a British L1A1 SLR (a semi-auto-only version of the FN FAL) to fire full-auto.
For reference, I disagree with the poster quoted. Yes, MANY agents in Federal law enforcement start out with a genuine desire to do good. Many of them keep that desire and intention throughout their careers. But there are also those who take the job specifically to be a jackbooted thug, to have power over people and to be beyond any legal recourse from those they use their position to intimidate and abuse. These are the bad apples in the barrel, and there are too many of them and they have been allowed to rise into positions of too much power.
[1] In those photos, the lower casting is the 80%-finished receiver made by KT Ordnance; the upper casting is the finished version.
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Not to say that there is not a HUGE amount of room for improvement, and they should rescreen them every few years.
And the second link points to the same place as the first.
If the shoe string was installed and was the difference between legal and illegal, I could see it. Gun laws get kind of wacky, the gun is the part with the serial number on it, it would be nice if the Ruger MK II had it on the grip, not the barrel, for instance.
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Oops, copy/paste error. Fixed.
As the letter explains, the string is basically tied around the user's thumb and the cocking handle. Saying that this makes the string a machinegun is ridiculous to the point of insanity. Much better to say the firearm is poorly designed because a piece of string looped around the charging handle can cause it to appear to fire full-auto.
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But I may be warped, I live were carrying a ball point pen hidden in your pocket is a felony (if you COULD use it to inflict a stabbing injury with, it is a felony to cary it concealed, even if it has normal and customary uses that are legit). You live where you can cary a handgun concealed legally by just putting it in your pocket, last I heard.
Why anyone thinks the feds have the power to regulate machine guns is beyond me, in the only case law on it, US VS Miller, the defendants were unable to present their case to the Supreme Court, and thus lost (and the decision was quite clear on that being the reason they lost)(one had died, the other was in prison)).
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As used in this section, a
"dirk" or "dagger" means a knife or other
instrument with or without a handguard that is
capable of ready use as a stabbing weapon that
may inflict great bodily injury or death.
Note the emphasized words (emphasis mine). This means that under California law, a screwdriver, a wood chisel, even a ballpoint pen can be considered a "dirk or dagger". If you can stab someone with something and seriously injure (the loss of an eye, say) or kill them with it, it's illegal to carry it concealed. It's been argued that, poorly worded as this law is, it could even be applied to car keys, since you can blind someone by stabbing them in the eye with a key.
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