Chris Johnson

According to the Solicitor General of the United States:

The gist of the ATF’s argument is that the GCA of 1968 defined a frame or receiver as something that could be readily converted into a firearm. Therefore, the defining aspect is how much time and skill it takes to convert a thing into a firearm.

If we have a small, purpose built, CNC machine which we load with a piece of 7075 bar stock, we push the button, and 3 hours later there is an AR15 lower receiver, is that 7075 bar stock a frame or receiver?

The ATF is arguing that if you sell that CNC machine along with the piece of 7075, then the 7075 is a receiver.

So, if the parts have “well-known other uses”, then it isn’t a frame or receiver? How about a business card with an etching of a firearm component? Business cards have “well-known other uses”.

So it is not a frame or receiver unless there is evidence that the intended purpose is to make a frame or receiver? Again, this means that if I have a 50% lower and the skills and instructions, that makes it a receiver?

The last time I went to the grocery and purchased a taco kit and some ground beef, I came home and told my wife, “I brought home tacos”.

She would have smacked me upside the head if I had told her, “It’s readily convertible into tacos, so it is the same.”

The difference, in the ATF’s eyes, between an AR-15, perfectly legal to own with no tax stamp, and a “machinegun”, requiring a tax stamp, is one hole placed above the selector switch.

They are so concerned about that one hole, that if that location is even marked, it is considered a machinegun.

Never mind that you need an auto-sear, an M16 trigger, an M16 disconnector, an M16 selector switch, and an M16 hammer, just a dimple makes that receiver a machinegun.

What the Solicitor General is arguing is that it is a jig that makes a hunk of aluminum a receiver. This strongly implies that if somebody were to create a jig for drilling the hole for the auto-sear, that would make almost every AR-15 lower receiver a machine gun.

Or it could go back to the evil days of the 6 magic parts. If your AR-15 had any of the 6 magic parts in it, then it was a machine gun. If you had any one of an M16: auto-sear, hammer, trigger, disconnector, selector, or bolt carrier, then you had a machinegun.

Now it will be a simple jig. How simple? It is an L shaped piece with two holes drilled in it. The top hole is a drill guide. The lower hole has a pin press fit. Put the pin into the selector hole. Put the small leg of the L over the deck of the receiver. The small hole is in the correct place to drill for an auto-sear.

You can read the transcript if you would like. It isn’t difficult, but some arguments are difficult to follow.

“Management Agency” is the key here.

In leadership courses we hear the phrase “Either lead, follow or get the fuck out of the way.” There is a strong reason for this, projects fail when leadership is weak.

“A bad decision now is better than a good decision too late,” is another.

What this means is that in a situation where leadership is needed, we need a good leader, and then we need to follow them. If we are not following, then we might be the de facto leader. If we are not following, and we are not leading, we are the problem.

If you want to see a prime example of failed leadership, consider your local PTA. There are reputations at stake, there is money on the table. And there are a dozen voices, all attempting to get their way.

A natural leader has an ability to lead that comes from their nature, and their upbringing. They might have augmented that natural ability with training. They are still few and far between.

Trained leaders are those that have been through training on how to lead. They might be able to lead, but they are likely to be uncomfortable leading. This causes failure in trust and mistakes.

In a disaster, leaders will step up at the time of the event. These will be those that who are natural leaders. The “trained” leaders are likely to be slow to step up, hoping that someone else will take on the mantel of leadership.

This is precisely what we saw in the current disaster. The natural leaders got up and did.

These people heard the call of duty, put their lives on hold, grabbed what they could and went into action. When they arrived at the scene, they self organized. That is to say, leaders stepped forward and did what was needed.

Because they are doers, things got done. The right people were in the right place doing the right thing.

When FEMA arrives, they bring two things with them, a checkbook and “management”.

If the management is good, then they will slide into the existing system, their natural or trained leadership skills will shine through, and they will make it easier for the doers to get things done.

The horrible truth is that the people that FEMA brings to the party are unlikely to be natural leaders. Natural leaders do not find themselves as low-level government employees.

These examples of petty bureaucrats arrive on scene and start following their scripts. Just like they were taught in class.

They start by making an inventory of the goods and capabilities they have on hand. According to the book, this is more important than actually seeing those goods and services being delivered to those in need.

A primary goal is to make sure that those most in need get the help they need. This means holding back on the supplies at hand, to have a reserve for when they find those in desperate need.

Because they are a management team, when they step in, they take over all the prepositioned goods and services.

Being management, they need to make sure that they are rested and prepared for the next day’s work.

As you might guess, this is written from the perspective of the petty bureaucrat. They believe they are doing good. They believe they know better. They believe they are the saviors.

The correct answer is that they should arrive with hat in hand and ask, “how can I help?”. Instead, they know they are supposed to lead, and leaders take control and bark orders.

FEMA is a failure at this point.

That, and they have been used to funnel money to illegal immigrants, makes it all the worse.

“We are from the government, we are here to help.” is a strong indication that it is time for SSS.

There are two cases that have been granted certiorari so far. I expect there to be three or four this term.

The most important, in the long term, is Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. et al. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos.

This is a lawfare case initiated by Mexico against a number of firearm related companies. Wholesalers, manufacturers, and retailers. It was brought in Massachusetts. The reasoning is obvious, Massachusetts hates guns. The First Circuit hates guns. The First Circuit is a known rogue inferior court.

The gist of the case is that people who make and sell guns know that some of their guns will be used illegally. They also know that they will be used illegally in Mexico. The companies did not do enough to keep guns out of Mexico. Therefore, they are responsible for the violence using guns in Mexico.

This is another attack on the PLCAA, Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The PLCAA was passed to stop frivolous lawsuits against firearms dealers. It affords those that make and sell guns protected from responsibility for the miss use of their products. Just like every other industry in the country.

Ford Motor Company is not responsible when a drunk driver kills somebody while driving a Ford F150. Chicago Cutlery is not responsible when somebody uses a cheap kitchen knife to kill somebody. Stanley is not responsible when somebody uses one of their hammers to bludgeon somebody to death.

The firearms’ industry is the only tool that is blamed for the misuse of their products.

The district court dismissed the case as a PLCAA protected case. The bad guys appealed to the First Circuit where, of course, they decided the suit was novel and somehow outside the PLCAA. The good guys requested cert. back in April.

Cert was granted October 4th.

Why is this case so important? Because this is the second large case that has directly attacked the ability of firearm manufacturers for damages. The Sandy Hook case was part of the reason that Remington went bankrupt.

The idea is not to win these cases, the idea is to drain these companies of money. If they win, so much the better, if they lose, they still win.

It is a backdoor path to gun control.

If these large cases succeed, we will see this lawfare extend down to the smallest of entities. Every FFL will be scared of somebody suing them because a firearm they sold was misused.

The Supreme Court is highly likely to rule in favor of the PLCAA. The arguments given by the bad guys are feeble. The case is interlocutory (not completed at the district and circuit levels.) That there isn’t a circuit split. That the district court dismissed the counts against some of the good guys.

All the reasons given by the bad guys did not stop the Supreme Court from granting cert. Now we will see what the merit fillings will be.

The second case that was granted Cert. is Garland v. VanDerStok. This is the case where the ATF decided that a hunk of aluminum is a firearm because it might someday become a firearm.

The GCA of 1968 defines a “firearm” and “frames and receivers”. A frame or receiver is a thing that can be readily converted into a firearm.

An AR-15 lower receiver, with attached stock and grip, along with an FCG is not a functional gun. You have to pair it with an upper receiver to create a functional firearm.

Since this is so easy, the lower receiver is considered a firearm because it can be readily converted to one.

An AR15 lower receiver starts as either a piece of aluminum bar stock or as a forging.

It is not a “firearm” under the 1968 GCA until it reaches that stage where it can be readily converted into a functional firearm.

The ATF has long held that you can completely mill/form the outside of the receiver. That includes decking the top, establishing and threading the buffer tube connection. Forming the grip area.

You can also drill and ream the holes for the pivot pins, the trigger guard, the magazine latch, the bolt hold open, and all detent pin holes. The magazine catch slot and the bolt hold open slot can also be completely milled.

If you mark the location of the selector switch, trigger, hammer, or auto-sear pin holes, then it is enough to be a receiver, as defined by the 1968 GCA. Marking any part of the fire control pocket is also a no no.

The ATF decided that they wanted people purchasing hunks of aluminum that they intended to turn into receivers to fill out 4473s and to have background checks done. So they changed the law.

A frame or receiver is something that can be readily converted into a firearm.

The ATF no claims that something that can be converted into a frame or receiver is also a firearm.

There is no stopping this camel, once it gets its nose in the tent. The ATF could define a hunk of aluminum bar stock as a firearm. They’ve stated that hunks of plastic and aluminum with instructions are firearms. Without those instructions, they are not firearms.

An 80% frame or receiver is not a firearm, but an 80% frame or receiver with a jig is a firearm.

This is likely to be decided on process and not the Second Amendment protected rights.

There are a few other cases teed up. These include the Maryland Assault Weapon/Large Capacity Magazine ban. The California’s LCM ban, if the Ninth actually issues an opinion this decade. In addition, there are a couple of cases coming out of Illinois that would look very nice on the Supreme Court docket.

Our first case, VanDerStock will be heard on October 8th, 2024. This coming Tuesday.

This is a person I have been following for years. She has shown herself to be honest. When she makes mistakes, she comes back, acknowledges the error, corrects the error and moves on.

She was in MA, she is currently in TN(?)

@hunnybeenatural All the info I have is: He’s on IG. Thicc30abroker. Jonathan Howard. Facebook profile Jonathan Howard He has this in his bio on IG Work with me: linktr.ee/jonathan.howard Charlie Keebaugh http://aerialrecovery.org Zeb @National Coatings tinyurl.com/NCIFundraiser They also need Starlink communication. Most areas don’t have a way of communicating. Ppl asking for staging location? Rutherford airport is a great drop off location Please story for other ways to help Hurricane Helene Relief 🙏🏼❤️ #HurricaneHeleneRelief #HurricaneHelene #JonathanHoward #Thicc30abroker #NationalCoatings #aerialrecovery ♬ original sound – Hunny Bee Natural !

@theappalachianson

Special thanks to everyone who has supported us and our mountain communities. I see other content creators and myself connecting people with funds and supplies and seeing the power we have to do so is spectacular, but it's still not enough. We scroll through our phones all the time and see tragedies all over the world never thinking it'll be in our own back yard. Donate to: BeLoved Asheville Equal Plates Poder Emma

♬ original sound – The Appalachian Son

Just a sample of the videos that are getting out.

The primary method of communications, at this point, seems to be StarLink. StarLink has proven itself to be a viable solution to disaster communications. Enough so, that I will be getting StarLink for us, to use as a backup.

I’ve heard almost nothing good from the federal government. The last I heard was that Kamala is promising those people who lost everything $750.

I’m sure they will have to pay taxes on that.

Multiple sources have reported that FEMA has arrived and is confiscating goods and money meant for disaster relief sent by people. One posting claimed that if FEMA decides to, they can choose not to disperse that money, keeping it for the next minor disaster in a blue city.

If you are donating, make sure your goods and money are going to the people, not the government. Do your research.

Elon Musk is making plans to send men to Mars. They will be going on a one-way journey. It will take them months to get there. Once they arrive, there is no short-term way to return. They are risking it all.

In 1620, 132 people boarded a small ship and sailed west. They were at sea for 10 weeks, nearly three months. The trip to Mars will take 115 days, or so, 16.4 weeks. Not all that much longer than the trip on the Mayflower.

The colonization of America, by Europe, was a daunting task. Most people who made the journey had no expectation of every being able to return to the land of their birth. When they arrived, they might be with earlier colonists, or they might be in a new location.

When they landed, they had to survive. They had limited resources to forge a new life in a new land. Some died, others thrived.

That sense of “we can do” is part of our heritage. It is part of my heritage. I hope it is part of your heritage.

Over the last half century, it feels like we have lost that mindset.

My Ex. used to tell me what her mother taught her, “Why try? You know you are going to fail.” There were so many things that she never tried because she “knew” she would fail.

My parents instilled in me a sense of ability. Do you want to go fishing? Go fishing. Do you want to go hunting? Go hunting. Do you want to disassemble your motorcycle to attempt to repair it? Do it.

Everything I attempted my parents were there giving me support to succeed. I hope I have given that same level of support to my children.

I came out of that childhood knowing that I can do better, do well, succeed. Failure is a possibility, but a failure is just a data point, telling me how not to do that thing. Now go try again.

We lost that.

We wait for the government to show up and help. “What are the ten scariest words in the English language? We’re from the government, we’re here to help.” — Ronald Reagan.

Katrina showed that. Sandy showed that. Those cities could not deal, they demanded help from the country. The government responded. And the people were not satisfied.

This weekend, hurricane Helene made landfall. Florida was hit, but the storm moved north and dumped water on the Carolinas, Georgia, and Tennessee. People describe it as a once in a 1000-year storm.

Entire mountains washed away. Homes, businesses, roads, bridges are all washed away in the mud slides and water.

I had family that used to live in that area. I’ve been there. It is gorgeous. Living on the side of a mountain, where your driveway leads to a family road, and it is 1000 feet in elevation to reach a county road.

I can close my eyes and see it, and it is beautiful.

Our government cannot help us. When we talk about FEMA coming to help, what they actually bring is a checkbook. They are money people. They are management people. FEMA has no construction equipment, rescue gear, supplies on hand to help in an Emergency.

They are there to pay bills.

So instead, the American Spirit came out in force.

Because our Government has been failing us, we, The People, have been learning that we have the power. We can do. We do have a voice.

And that spirit is there in the South East. It is people dragging their Bass Boats up from the Gulf coast to do rescue missions. It is private pilots, flying their personal copters into to the area with supplies and to rescue people.

It is a company that trains pack mules showing up with mule trains to haul supplies.

It is people sending targeted donations. It is people handing some of their food and supplies for the mobile to move forward.

It is people, who, like myself, own construction equipment (John Deere 210C), showing up and putting their equipment to use.

It is we, The People, acting like a community, standing shoulder to shoulder doing the right thing.

I don’t have places for you to donate. I don’t have a list of things that are needed.

Find those for yourself. If you do locate a source that you trust, please tell us and include your source or reason for trusting.

God bless and watch over those at risk.

This is from a screenshot from Facebook or X. I have not verified the source, but it sounds like her.

The Second Amendment should be a viable defense for anybody charged with a “gun crime”. Found carrying with an expired CCW? Second Amendment defense. Cross an imaginary line and your right to carry disappeared? Second Amendment defense.

We should have seen 100s if not 1000s of cases over the years where the defendants argued that their actions were protected by the Second Amendment.

The reason was actually pretty simple, the courts refused to give those defenses any weight. No defense lawyer was going to bring up a 2A defense when they knew it would just upset the court.

Add to that the many circuit courts that had determined that The People had no right to keep and bear arms. The right to keep and bear arms was reserved for the militia.

As it stood in 2007, private militias were illegal in most states, the National Guard was either formally or informally declared “the [state] militia”, the state AG was charged with bringing any state level constitutional challenges, AND the state AG was charged with defending state laws against constitutional challenges.

In the Ninth Circus court of appeals, the only group that could challenge California’s gun laws was California.

In 2008, the Supreme Court issued their opinion in Heller.

This cut through the crap, said clearly that the Second Amendment was protecting an individual right. It went further, defining almost every word and phrase in the Second Amendment to absolutely define what the protected right was.

Rogue courts immediately pivoted to a new reason to stomp on the rights of The People, the Second Amendment protected rights of The People were not as important as the important things the state wanted to do.

Until 2022, this was the state of the right to keep and bear arms. For states that were not infringing, nothing changed. For states that were infringing, the rogue courts balanced our rights away.

In 2022, Bruen was decided. Bruen reaffirmed Heller. It laid out, in kindergarten language that even a rogue court could not misunderstand, exactly how to apply the law in Second Amendment challenges.

The two cases of interest that were not decided, but instead were Granted certiorari, the lower court’s opinion was Vacated, and the cases were Remanded back to the circuit courts to do over in light of Bruen were Duncan and Bianchi.

It was my opinion, at the time, that we would have a decision from the Fourth Circuit court on Bianchi within 6 months.
We got that opinion August 6th, 2024, two years after the case was GVRed.

It took the Fourth Circuit court two years to get around to issuing their opinion after they were told to do it over again, correctly. Since they were outcome-driven, the results were, predictably, the same.

AR-15s and their ilk are not “arms” as defined in the Second Amendment. At least that’s what the Fourth says. Mind you, the option is around 59 pages long. The dissent is 120 pages long.

The opinion is full of references to news reports, articles from all over the place. What it is lacking is references to this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. In addition, they misrepresented the Supreme Court’s holding in Bruen.

The Supreme Court said that when the inferior courts were using the two stage means-end balancing method to find every state infringement “Constitutional”, they got the first part right, where they said “This is covered by the Second Amendment”, and the rogue inferior courts were getting it wrong when they balanced our rights away.

The Fourth says that since the circuit courts were getting it right on the first part, and their first step was to find that assault weapons were not covered by the Second Amendment, even though they did means-ends, they still were right to declare assault weapon bans constitutional.

Bianchi v Frosh has been going on so long that they had a change in AGs, the case became Bianchi v. Brown. The case is now seeking cert from the Supreme Court as Snope v. Brown. Dominic Bianchi moved out of Maryland and lost standing.

Duncan is still stuck in the Ninth Circuit court, back in California. We are unlikely to hear anything from them in the next 6 months or more.

But, we might see Snope make it back before the Supreme Court in the next session. Which means that it will be argued in the 2025 term, which starts in October 2025.

It is my opinion that the Fourth Circuit delayed issuing their opinion until it was too late for Snope to request cert for the 2024 term.

The history of the race to the moon is amazing. There is so much that happened behind the scenes, out of sight of the public because it was that dangerous.

My parents kept me awake for the moon landing. I remember watching Neil Armstrong step foot on the moon.

I am currently following Elon Musk’s personal goal of putting men on Mars. In 5 or so years, I hope to be watching man set food on Mars, to stay.

The short of it, watch the movie. It does a good job of telling the story of Neil Armstrong.

Then visit https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/apollo-11-what-we-saw to listen to the story of Apollo 11 or watch it:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/WGmyPedxhacbTcmu

Well worth the time to watch all four parts and the movie.

Enjoy!