Image courtesy Ares Armor

The ATF’s jackbooted and illegal raid on Ares Armor has made headlines for days, but it doesn’t seem to have intimidated the National City, CA manufacturer one bit. Instead of bowing and scraping to the ATFE’s scofflaws with badges, they’re using the ATFE’s notoriety to help them move some of their (remaining) inventory.

Stock lower parts kits (LPKs) for AR rifles are as common as Ford F-150 trucks, but Ares is banking on the infamous raid to make their plane-Jane LPKs just a little more desirable.

Since the ATFE turned the Ares Armor offices upside down and ‘inspected’ everything in their illegal search for, well, something worth searching for, Ares is marketing these LPKs as ‘BATFE Inspected.’ And since Ares is being careful not to use the BATFE logo in their advertisements, there’s not a damned thing the jackbooted thugs can do about it. Which is awesome.

These LPKs might be more desirable for those who want to help Ares thumb give the BATFE the big FU, but they’re not more expensive. At $69.96 each, they’re the same price as any generic lower parts kit on the market.

If you want one, however, you might want to pay in person and in cash. You can bet the BATFE will be trying to keep track of Ares’ new customers, now that it probably knows who all the prior customers were.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

50 COMMENTS

  3. The end result is the same, the illustrious ATF got its customer base, either credit card, check, UPS tracking numbers, etc.
    When your spending taxpayer money, no stone is left unturned.

    The ATF could care less about being sued or any possible “infringements”. Good for Ares, I guess, they will be forced out of business soon enough.

    Damn sad.

    • Couldn’t care less. If you could care less that means you are not at your lowest point of caring. Nonetheless, point taken.

      • Gah finally someone else knows how the phrase is actually supposed to go haha I commend you sir.

  4. “The ATF’s jackbooted and illegal raid…”

    No, illegal would be if they didn’t get a warrant and follow due process. This is just something you don’t like… there’s a difference.

    Probably were too many boots around, though.

    • The issue at hand is that the affidavit used for the ex parte hearing to bypass the RTO was wrong. The “facts” were not facts, and the judge caved. So yes they got their precious little piece of paper, but once they are proven wrong, like in the F&F, nothing will happen..

    • There’s serious questioning whether they did follow due process, or lied to the judge to get their warrant. Your correction is incorrect.

      • If they did indeed lie to the judge to get their warrant, I would not like to be the next ATF agent standing in front of a judge.
        Judges don’t like being lied to about warrants. It makes them look foolish to okay a warrant based on lies.
        Judges do not like to look foolish.

      • Nobody in the DOJ is going to stick their neck out to prove the BATFE obtained the search warrant unlawfully, so it makes precious little difference. This is peanuts compared to F&F, too.

      • These ATF types and the Assistant U.S. Attorney know which Federal Judges to go to. Certain judges are known as “rubber stamps” who grant search warrants for whatever the agents want – and the U.S. Attorney knows which ones to pick how to “fine tune” (spin) an Affidavit to get the warrant. These judges may never know nor care if they were lied to. These are generally magistrate judges. When the actual trial comes up, a different judge will be assigned.

        • But they will still have to put up with loads of crap from the other judges in Chambers if they approved a couple of bad warrants and were outed in public.

    • If they or any of the other government tyrants bothered to read the Constitution they would know that everything they do related to firearms is unconstitutional/illegal.

    • Would you not consider falsifying information to obtain a warrant a crime because that is precisely what they did.

        • Information on warrants is SUPPOSED to be independently corroborated. In principle, they are not supposed to be able to secure a warrant solely in CI information, for example, but must verify by independent source.

          In practice … “independent source” can be stretched, as can “verify.”

  6. Put me down for 5 lol
    Once they unseal the warrant and things come to light in court, I have a feeling the ATF is going to feel really sheepish.

    • ATF feeling sheepish? Those punks didn’t feel sheepish about having Randy Weaver’s family murdered by the Feebs. They didn’t feel sheepish about shipping guns to goons in Fast & Furious. They didn’t feel sheepish about Brian Terry being killed with a F&F gun. They didn’t feel sheepish that their own incompetence got their agents killed at Waco. So why would they feel sheepish about this?

  8. I just bought a T-shirt. It was over $30 after shipping, but hey, it’s an FU to the ATF. We’re probably already on their radar just by being on TTAG.

    Now the NSA can read my info about how much I despise the ATF, who changes rules as they go along. I have a special disdain for a federal government who will send weapons to Syria and Mexico without background checks, but has no problem raiding businesses here in the USA.

  10. If they knew, or had reason to believe, that the ATF was coming to raid their facility to look at a customer list, then why didn’t all of their computer hard drives suddenly and unexpectedly crash?

    “I’m sorry, Mr./Ms. ATF agent, but all of our records died with the computers that just had to be replaced. Can’t help you with that but would you like to buy a paperweight?”

    There’s no law requiring a backup server. I was planning to get my lowers there. I’m glad I didn’t now. I think what Ares does is great but they had plenty of opportunity do get rid of the info they knew the ATF was after. Accidents happen. Could’ve just said, “Sorry, we don’t keep a customer list to ensure our clients’ privacy.”

    Suddenly all those “ghost guns” have now been reincarnated.

  11. You guys have it all wrong. again. the ATF was NOT there to harass ARES. They just wanted to make sure that the alias AG Eric Holder used to buy his LPK to ship to his buddies in the Sinola Cartel was not compromised. It is classified and all, you see.

  13. @guywithagun
    One problem with your thought!! A hard drive crash would conceivably be the “ultimate fu” to the ATF!! Unfortunately there is a program on the market called Recuva that can recover info from even erased hard drives! Only true solution would be to physically destroy/dismantle the hdd’s and spread out the platters in a large city areas trash cans!!
    I’ve completely erased a HDD and then recovered pictures off of it with that program!!

    • Sigh. Yes and no.

      First, physical destruction is cheap and provided you have time to pull your drives, take ’em apart, smash the platters and then scatter them all over town, that’s not a bad way to do it.

      Merely erasing a hard drive does not remove the data from it. Technically, it marks the sectors as available for overwrites of data in the future. That’s easy to recover.

      Harder is to wipe the hard drive with a string of zeros. You are overwriting the data, changing the magnetic state of the data bits on the platters. You can recover some of this because the metal “remembers” being in a particular state and slight variations in the new magnetic state are detectable.

      Harder still is a multi-pass overwrite with random data. It’s possible to recover some data, but you’re talking about bringing in the experts for this stuff. Possibly a university laboratory and several weeks of close examination.

      I highly recommend Derek’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) for most everyone’s data wiping needs. The downside is that it is multi-hour process for the light stuff, a day or so for the deep wipes. Hard to do when the ATF is inspecting your shop that morning.

      It’s difficult to destroy data quickly.

      • DBAN is great but way too time consuming. When ATF first contacted then physical dismemberment should have started then!!
        Recuva works on drives I’ve overwritten with factory erase programs. Best, and I don’t remember name of program, is one that even rewrites the MBR of the drive. That does a hell of a lot to stop recovery of data!!

        • You don’t know a damn thing about wiping hard drives. Modern hard drives will be completely unrecoverable after using the DoD Short method in DBAN, no matter what kind of software you use.

          • Gee!! Somebody get butthurt this morning!! Wasn’t saying I knew Everything about computers. Just made an observation!
            And Mr Flournoy why don’t you learn some manners and pull up your Hello Kitty Panties and grow some balls!
            Freaking jerkwad!! You’re worse than MikeyB Numbers!!

        • Speedracer: I guess I should have started out by explaining that I have over 10 years professional experience in IT and data security. I know all about “Recuva” and its limitations. Like Thomas said, DBANs “DODSHORT” command wipes a drive in a few hours and overwrites all data on the drive. Nothing is recoverable.

          Regardless, that is all beside the point. As a private (non-FFL) business, they are not required to even keep a customer list of any kind. If they had one, it is their prerogative to destroy it at any time. They should have done that immediately.

          And finally, I think the “Ultimate FU” would be a very fair and appropriate response to the ATF. So what’s the problem?

    • When our ‘government’ because the reincarnation of the SS, the Gestapo, the KGB etc. You get the idea.

  15. Just awesome – I wish more people and companies would take this attitude when dealing with brown-shirted government thugs and nazi murderers.

  16. Interesting that this happened in the State of CA and Ciunty of San Diego while we are waiting on decision by the 9th on Peruta. Unrelated issues but perhaps a display of arrogance that might backfire? There have to be some liberal judges who would be troubled by this naked display of Federal power…?

    Maybe not. I have a feeling there is more to this story…

  17. I think everyone is missing something here.

    What is the name, address and phone number of the judge that signed the search warrant?

    Let’s start shaming the judges that are in bed with these government agencies that violate the 2nd and 4th amendment.

Comments are closed.