Guns

Stephen Halbrook | 4.19.2024 9:52 PM

ATF's Final Rule Definition of "Engaged in the Business" as a Dealer in Firearms amounts to 466 pages of responses to comments and the final rule itself. Over 252,000 of the 258,000 comments or 98% in favor of the proposed rule were form letters with identical text found online and recommended by (anti-gun) organizations. Only 5,140 were not form letters. Of the 99,000 comments opposed to the rule, 80,000 or 81% were form letters. That means that 18,810 were not form letters. So more than three times the numbers of opponents filed comments with actual substance as did those in favor.

The final rule is substantially the same as the proposed rule. See my previous post "'He's at it again!' Merrick Garland proposes ever-more intrusive ATF regulations." A number of points that I (and others) made in comments filed in opposition to the proposed rule were taken seriously enough for ATF to reject at length.

One new item stands out. The Gun Control Act (GCA) excludes occasional sales and purchases of a "personal collection" of firearms from the term "engaged in the business" of dealing in firearms. The proposed rule defined "personal collection" to include curios and relics and firearms used in recreational activities. In response to numerous comments criticizing the proposal for not including firearms used for self-defense, the final rule explicitly states that "the term [personal collection] shall not include firearms accumulated primarily for personal protection." Yet nothing in the statute excludes such firearms from being part of a personal collection.

By purporting to exclude the occasional buying and selling of firearms acquired for self-defense from the "personal collection" category, the rule would render the person more likely to be subject to the licensing requirement. Yet that category was enacted by the Firearm Owners' Protection Act of 1986, which declared that the rights of citizens … to keep and bear arms under the second amendment to the United States Constitution … require additional legislation to correct existing firearms statutes and enforcement policies." And the Supreme Court stated in D.C. v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects "arms 'in common use at the time' for lawful purposes like self-defense."

In defining "engaged in the business" as a dealer, the rule states that "there is no minimum threshold number of firearms........

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