An ATF informant has been nominated for NRA Board of Directors

[Balog]

John Brown is a board member for NFATCA, the group largely responsible for the ATF's push to pass 41P destroying the use of NFA trusts. The man is the worst sort of filthy, traitorous Quisling, and shouldn't be allowed in the NRA building let alone on its board. If you can vote in the upcoming elections for NRA board members, please vote against him.

http://www.examiner.com/article/lawyers-comments-raise-troubling-questions-about-atf-and-nfa-collector-s-group

Making its filing under the wire for the December 9 deadline, the Firearms Industry Consulting Group submitted its comments Monday responding to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' proposed rulemaking change ATF-41P, regarding “Machine Guns, Destructive Devices and Certain Other Firearms; Background Checks for Responsible Persons of a Corporation, Trust or Other Legal Entity With Respect to Making or Transferring a Firearm.” The FICG comments raise serious questions about both ATF’s compliance with established rules and the law, as well as about the Bureau’s relationship with leaders of the National Firearms Act Trade and Collectors Association, which filed the petition ATF says prompted the rulemaking change proposal in the first place.

These are all serious and vital points, but there is another series of observations that begin on page 27 of the comment file that elaborate on concerns about the role of the NFATCA, and specifically the relationship of its president with ATF.

“Docket entry ATF-2013-0001-0437 [view] is a public comment submitted by John Brown, apparently the very same John Brown who, as President of National Firearms Act Traders and Collectors Association (‘NFATCA’), submitted the petition to initiate a rulemaking on which ATF purports to base this proceeding,” FICG relates. “Repeated efforts to ascertain from Mr. Brown the details of the incidents as to which he asserts he has knowledge met refusals as he disavowed direct, personal knowledge stating only that as a result of ‘working inside ATF for over 10 years’ he knew things he ‘should never know.’"

“t would thus appear that ATF is itself the source of this information,” FICG infers. “The planting of comments that merely repeat to ATF the very information ATF purports to have but refused to submit to public critique exacerbates the problem of ATF's refusal to provide underlying information.

“Mr. Brown's connection to ATF extends beyond his acknowledgment that the information to which he alluded in his comment came from ATF itself,” FICG continues. “Indeed, as Richard Vasquez -- ATF's Chief of the Firearms Training Branch and previous Assistant and Acting Chief of the Firearms Technology Branch -- testified under oath only last year, Mr. Brown ‘interacted with ATF a lot,’ was a friend since at least 2006, had personally transferred two firearms to him, had transferred firearms to other ATF employees, visited ATF ‘to meet and become personal with a lot of the offices’ over a period of years, and provided him with information to pass along to ATF for ATF's use in a forfeiture proceeding.

“Mr. Brown apparently went so far as to forward e-mails he had received from a FFL involved in litigation with ATF to ATF for ATF's use in the litigation against the FFL,” the FICG narrative continues. “Indeed, Mr. Brown was not surprised to be characterized as a ‘confidential source’ for Acting Chief Vasquez and ATF.

“Despite having acquired three machineguns illegally manufactured by George D. Clark, Mr. Brown seems to be the only FFL in that situation that ATF never referred for prosecution,” FICG asserts. “In fact, ATF knowingly left Mr. Brown in possession of that contraband for six weeks and then promptly destroyed that evidence before the completion of prosecutions of other individuals in possession of Mr. Clark's machineguns.

“In addition, during this same time period Mr. Brown, together with the attorney he reportedly hired to prepare the NFATCA petition upon which ATF now relies, hired two 30-year veterans of ATF who simultaneously worked together with ATF to draft the National Firearms Act Handbook.

[vaskidmark]

Who the [expletive deleted] nominated him?

stay safe.

[AJ Dual]

The whole "confidential source" and the FFL prosecutions aside, at least when it comes to the upcoming Rule 41p Brown is not a quisling or a "traitor". He should not be a board member because he is an idiot.

Hanlon's Razor: "Never ascribe to malice what you can to incompetence."

Short version of what Brown and NFATCA were up to was they'd been in talks with the ATF for years to get rid of CLEO sign-off, in of itself a laudable goal.

Where the idiocy comes in is Brown and NFATCA had no clue how to negotiate. That they forgot the entire point of the NFA was to keep the general public from getting NFA items wherever possible. And that they believed they could negotiate in good faith with the .gov. especially the ATF. And further, that they should continue negotiations with the ATF once Obama and Holder were in office, instead of just leaving damn well enough alone.

Instead of give-and-take in negotiations, laying out what they wanted and waiting on the ATF to counter, Brown and NFATCA immediately offered up the idea of eliminating trusts in trade for removing CLEO, or trusts making them so burdensome people would not want to submit them to the NFA examiners. They thought that by offering the idea that would eliminate the NFA Examiners burden of reviewing trusts, the ATF would be more inclined to agree to their desire to remove CLEO sign-off.

Then, like Darth Vader to Lando Calrissian, "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further." and that idea was pounced on as the basis for Rule 41p.  

[Tallpine]

When has the NRA ever been supportive of peasants owning full-auto weapons 

"Enforce existing gun laws" and all that crap 

[makattak]

When has the NRA ever been supportive of peasants owning full-auto weapons 

"Enforce existing gun laws" and all that crap 

Don't let your enemy choose where you fight your battles.

[brimic]

nstead of give-and-take in negotiations, laying out what they wanted and waiting on the ATF to counter, Brown and NFATCA immediately offered up the idea of eliminating trusts in trade for removing CLEO, or trusts making them so burdensome people would not want to submit them to the NFA examiners. They thought that by offering the idea that would eliminate the NFA Examiners burden of reviewing trusts, the ATF would be more inclined to agree to their desire to remove CLEO sign-off.

Then, like Darth Vader to Lando Calrissian, "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further." and that idea was pounced on as the basis for Rule 41p. 

In a version of America from a long time ago, the negotiation would have been more like:

"Get rid of the NFA and all its associated laws or we will tar, feather, light all of your kind on fire, before running you out of town on a rail."