By Lee Williams
Joe Biden repeated some of his most discredited lies about the Second Amendment Monday during a press conference held in the Rose Garden – deer in Kevlar vests, fictitious prohibitions on the right to keep and bear arms, including cannons – but it’s the actions he’s taking that are the most worrisome, because they’re all based upon a hoax by the ATF.
Without any congressional action and based solely on the flimsy authority of an executive order, Joe Biden is disarming Americans. He is taking away our right to build guns in our homes, even though Americans have been making guns in their homes since before there was a United States of America. Biden based his decision on “ghost gun” data he was given by the ATF – data even the ATF itself cannot verify, which a whistleblower claims the U.S. Justice Department admitted is inaccurate.
“Last year alone, law enforcement reported approximately 20,000 suspected ghost guns to be – to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That’s a tenfold increase in these ghost guns from 2016. Tenfold in five years,” Biden said Monday. “These guns are weapons of choice for many criminals. We’re going to do everything we can to deprive them of that choice and, when we find them, put them in jail for a long, long time. Law enforcement is sounding the alarms. Our communities are paying the price. And we’re acting.”
The entire “ghost gun” drama was started by Carlos A. Canino, the former Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the ATF’s Los Angeles Field Division. In 2020, anti-gun activists asked Canino about the prevalence of homemade firearms in California. An earlier study said 30% of the guns recovered by ATF in California were unserialized “ghost guns,” but Canino said the real numbers were actually much higher. “Forty-one percent, so almost half our cases we’re coming across are these ‘ghost guns,’” Canino said. That was all it took.
A story by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project published last week showed that the ATF cannot verify Canino’s comments.
“I contacted the Los Angeles Field Division earlier today after your initial email, and their Public Information Officer was unable to verify any figures provided in 2019 by former-SAC Canino without knowing the time-period(s) he used for his comments,” an ATF spokesman said in the email.
After the story was published, a staff member for a U.S. Congressman came forward. This whistleblower, who asked that their name be withheld from publication, revealed even more problems about the ATF’s “ghost gun” statistics.
The staff member asked the U.S. Justice Department for “ghost gun” data, since both the ATF and the Bureau of Justice Statistics fall under the DOJ’s purview.
“Because it is not currently a federal crime to own either a homemade firearm or a braced pistol, DOJ claims they do not have accurate/comprehensive databases to track their use in crimes. They compile information from state and local police units – but that information is only as good as what is reported,” the whistleblower said in an email.
To be clear, the United States Department of Justice told a U.S. Congressman’s staff member that their “ghost gun” data is neither accurate nor comprehensive, and then just days later, the President of the United States issued an executive order stripping Americans of the Second Amendment rights based upon this inaccurate data.
“Despite that,” the staff member said in an email, “the DOJ sent a document stating: ‘Privately made firearms (PMFs), known as ghost guns, are a rapidly growing contributor to violent crime. From January 1, 2016, through December 31, 2020, there were approximately 23,906 suspected PMFs reported to ATF as having been recovered by law enforcement, including in connection with 325 homicides or attempted homicides. The trendline is troubling: in 2016, local law enforcement reported to ATF 1,750 suspected PMFs; by 2020, that number had grown to 8,712, an increase of over 400 percent.’”
This is the same data Biden cited Monday in the Rose Garden, although he had 2021 numbers too.
There are a lot of problems and concerns with the Biden-Harris administration’s “crack down on ghost guns.” Most involve potential civil rights violations and the anti-gun candidate Biden picked to fill ATF’s vacant directorship. However, these problems pale when compared with the statistics ATF is citing as the reason for the crackdown – statistics the USDOJ itself admitted are false. This is nothing but a hoax by the ATF, and the President of the United States is either a victim or a willing participant of the hoax. That is a question history will decide.
All of the senior law enforcement officials I’ve spoken to – from Florida to Washington State – say “ghost guns” aren’t a concern. Most haven’t seen any – not one. Several had their staff check their property rooms for homemade firearms recovered from crime scenes. None were found. Several top cops accused the ATF of conflating homemade firearms with factory-made guns that have had their serial numbers illegally altered or removed, which could account for ATF’s high numbers.
I sincerely hope that someone with the authority to issue subpoenas and compel testimony will investigate the ATF data Biden is using to infringe upon our right to build guns in our homes. Hoodwinking a sitting president – even a likely willing participant like Joe Biden – shouldn’t be career enhancing, even at the ATF. In fact, some folks I’ve spoken to say it could constitute a crime.
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This story is part of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and is published here with their permission.
I really really hope that our Congressmen will stand up for THEIR right to be making legislation in this shameful violation of our Constitutional rights. I am writing mine right now. I encourage others to please do the same. Numbers matter!!!
Meh a couple were doing some publicity for media but nothing will happen. They let it happen in the last administration so not much they are gonna do bout it now.
„If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.“ — Joseph Goebbels
@ Paul…….Joseph Goebbels quotes, “some” are not far from the real truth……
https://www.quoteikon.com/joseph-goebbels-quotes.html
In other words, let’s keep the focus on guns being the problem, not criminals that use them. I don’t see how PMF’s are an issue. Criminals are lazy in the manner of putting effort toward anything except five finger discount or mayhem. They are destructive instead of constructive by nature.
PMF’s are usually more expensive to buy and very time consuming to machine/assemble. A criminal will not waste their money or time to build when they can just steal one and walk away. Just makes no logistical sense for criminals to be building their own firearms simply to get around paperwork or doing something legal. Maybe they are stealing PMF’s but I question whether they set up shops making them.
“…let’s keep the focus on guns being the problem, not criminals that use them.”
Low-hanging fruit. Dems/Leftists choosing to pick something John Q. Public (and I would say, most POTG) aren’t aware of and think don’t personally affect them. Allows for a perceived victory, whilst inflation rages and everyone’s already forgotten the botched pullout from Afghanistan that resulted in young men falling from the sky as our planes ascended.
If the MSM actually began to focus on the criminals, then the Dems’ epic failure of deterring crime (as compared to their actual encouragement of it) would be in the spotlight. The MSM doesn’t want that…it might mean the Bad Orange Man has a chance to come back to the WH. Gasp!
The ONLY statistic that we ALL can agree on? 100 percent of guns recovered from crime scenes were used by criminals. Maybe we’d be a lot better off by eliminating the supply of criminals rather than worrying about what gun was used after the fact. Shouldn’t simple idiots be able to arrive at a simple solution?
100 percent of guns recovered from crime scenes were used by criminals.
Nope. Can’t agree with that. A lot of jurisdictions will confiscate your weapon when you legally shoot someone in self-defense. And that’s at a crime scene.
You could say “100 percent of guns used in a crime were used by criminals,” though.
I think you’re looking only at individual criminals, not criminal enterprises.
A gang or ‘family’ might very well hire some guy to make “ghost guns” for them. If you can get a decent front for delivery of the materials, a small machine shop and one person could turn out receivers on the order of a few a day. Another person could probably assemble those few a day into complete firearms. It would be more technical work, but similar to drug operations that operate a near assembly line.
Of course, doing that sort of thing is illegal, since you can’t transfer a PMF without serializing it, and there’s the whole “not to a person known to be a criminal” thing.
And, of course, there’s the “Let’s buy Jimmy a CNC milling machine instead of a drill press.” Then you wouldn’t need 80% receivers. You could start from 0%. (Maybe I should buy more 0% receivers….)
Gun control zealots lying? This is my shocked face.
WMD’s in Iraq, Covid to kill 2.2 million Americans in first year, babies tossed out of Kuwaiti incubators, vaccines are 95% effective, there are no US bio labs in Ukraine, Whitmer kidnapping plot, Russian dossier…
I anxiously await the government data being right about something. Maybe all the alphabet agencies should take a page from Pfizers book and lock away their data for 75 years.
A LIE??? FROM OUR GOVERNMENT???? Shocked, I tell you, absolutely shocked. Who woulda thunk???? And, Sniffy Senile Joey perpetuating it??? Disbelief…… Next thing they will tell us is there is no Easter Bunny, no Santa Claus, and Joey Xiden is a great President, and OBlunder is an American. Shocked!!! But, wait, government is the Free Shit Santa Claus to the Non-Productive Government Plantation Dwellers.
Huh sounds like it may not just be NY reporting obliterated serial numbers as ghost guns.
funny thing nis even WITH those MAD jick ull numbers stamped into some guns, they still can’t trace them. And I’ve got guns WITH those Mad jick ull numbers and they can’t trace THOSE guns. Yet I have them in full compliance wiht every jot and tittle of the laws in place at the time I acquired them.
“Lies, racism, genocide, etc.” History confirms such filth comes with Gun Control wherever Gun Control has been or wherever Gun Control goes.
“All of the senior law enforcement officials I’ve spoken to – from Florida to Washington State – say ‘ghost guns’ aren’t a concern. Most haven’t seen any – not one.”
One of the local ATF guys here told me that in his almost 30 years with the ATF, he has seen less than 15 80% kit guns recovered at crime scenes in the hundreds of cases he has investigated with untraceable firearms, that the vast majority were commercially manufactured firearms that had the serial numbers removed or defaced in some way. He also told me when I asked him about the numbers of supposedly 80% kit guns and untraceable firearms used in crimes, as he chuckled about it said to think a lot lower.
He told me that most criminals don’t care if the gun has a serial number or not, and they don’t even try to remove the serial numbers any more. That they know now from years of watching how the legal system responds during prosecutions that a serial number existence or not is very unlikely to be a deciding factor to convict them of anything if they are caught for committing a crime with the gun so most don’t even bother to try to get rid of the serial number. That the majority of them don’t carry a firearm with them until they get ready to commit a crime then they get it from its hiding place and do the crime then hide the gun again so its unlikely anyone will see it except during the crime in which no victim ever has said “let me see the serial number on the gun. No serial number then no crime so go away.”
He also said that although there are ‘untraceable’ guns in terms of serial numbers, that about 95% of guns recovered at crime scenes do have serial numbers on them and are traceable.
This is why the “senior law enforcement officials” you’ve spoken to “from Florida to Washington State” “say ‘ghost guns’ aren’t a concern” and why “most haven’t seen any – not one.” – because the very concept of the ‘ghost gun’ epidemic use by criminals is over blown and for the most part doesn’t exist so it would be unlikely for those “senior law enforcement officials” to encounter them.
I have to agree. I’ve been policing for nearly 10 years in one of the biggest cities in the US and I’ve never seen an 80% on a scene. The closest I’ve seen is a blackpowder kit revolver that was being used for holdups.
I just assume at all times that, no matter what they’re saying, politicians are lying.
Did you see when the bird shit on Biden’s left lapel yesterday while he was lying in that speech? Even the animal kingdom doesn’t respect him.
Bird shit?
I thought his makeup crew spilled some sheetrock spackle.
They want a registered number on every gun and a name to go with it. They want to be able to come take them and knowing who has what tells them who to target. The whole point of this is an end run around the law against a database.
I agree that altering the serial number on anything usually means someone is doing something shady. It the gun was manufactured without a serial number, or re-built from parts(you should have some paperwork to prove it), it is a different thing. The anti gun people want a list and people don’t want to be put on lists.
The ATF already has a searchable database of about 1 billion firearms transactions. They don’t need an end run. Tyrants do not care what the citizenry wants.
A professionally made gun with its serial number filed off does NOT make it a homemade gun. People are being lied to used the fictitious term of ‘ghost gun’.
Lol
These weird words like ‘survival rifle’ and ‘bullet button’…
One of the major MSM networks had a story on “ghostguns” on the Monday nightly spews. Pictured were an obviously painted 1911 and some crude looking printed handgun, while the talking head blathered on about how extra deadly they are, and how a fully loaded one can be snuck onto any aircraft in a person’s carry-on baggage. I was really expecting to see Alfred E Neuman’s face when they cut back to the reporter whom was doing the voice over.
FAULTY DATA , GHOST GUNS
HOW ABOUT FAULTY DATA FOR PLANET EARTH CLIMATE CRISIS
YEAAA RAPE AND DESTROY PLANET EARTH . GHOST PLANET EARTH .
NO NEED FOR GHOST GUNS , PLANET GONE , WE HUMANS DID IT YEAAAA
Humans were okay until they got smart.
When did that happen?
Weather and Climate are described in large part by the Navier Stokes differential equations. The Navier Stokes differential equations describe fluid flow with changes in temperature and density. They are nonlinear, chaotic, with sensitive dependence on initial conditions. That means that no finite set of past data can ever predict even a single distant future measurement with confidence. This has been known since 1963 when Edward Lorenz published “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow” in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences”. Anyone who pretends to predict distant future states for a Navier Stokes system with confidence is either incompetent, or a fraud. The true facts are these:
1. Carbon Dioxide is a trace gas, currently making up less than 1% of the atmosphere.
2. Higher concentrations of Carbon Dioxide increase the rates at which plants grow.
3. Higher concentrations of Carbon Dioxide occur in the climate records AFTER periods of warming.
4. Warming is generally good, increasing the amount of water in the atmosphere, which increases rainfall in desert areas, and increases the growing season near the poles.
Warming also reduces the temperature differential, the difference between the highest and lowest temperatures. Wind blows from warm to cold, from moist to dry, from high pressure to low. Lower temperature differential means less severe weather, and higher means more.
Claims that warming will increase rates of severe weather have it arse-backwards.
LIARS! We get in trouble for lying to the Govt, but they can lie to us with impunity? Remember this A$$HOLES, you work for us!
Ha ha your funny.
No they dont work for Us, they work for themselves. If they worked for Us theyd be getting paid the national minimum wage.
Wonder if an EO generated by relying on faulty data, or no data, can be challenged in court, based on the quality of data and research behind the EO/EA?
Lawyers, can you clarify???
Is anyone surprised by this “Revelation” that some government agency is out right lying to promote their narrative and give themselves more power and authority?
Long past time for the BATFE to be disbanded. Their role as tax collectors can go to the IRS, their role as an investigatory Agency should go under the FBI, along with their forensic work, and the Arrest/Law enforcement should go to the US Marshall’s Service.
Of course we could disband or just eliminate or consolidate much of the Federal Government and the country would likely be better off. An overblown, out of control government is worse than no government at all.
MOre flimsy excuses to try and “justify” banning these guns wherever they re common. The bare fact is there are so many guns, serialsied and otherwise, about which they’ve not the slightest trace of a clue, and they want to change that. Their goal is to have us disarmed just like Ukraine were before the Roos Keys came round and overran them.
It needs to be noted that these new rules are really an executive action by Biden even if they are published in the federal register. An executive action is different from an executive order, it carries no legal weight.for the rest of the populace. An executive order and executive action is legally binding on those subject to the executive branch but not on the other two branches of government and not on the populace, but in some rare cases the populace can be subject to an executive order. These new rules are not one of those cases.
The fact that this executive action is published in the form of these rules in the federal register does not make them law. The law as written currently does not encompass these rules specifically but does give the atf authority to enforcement rules new and old but does not give them authority to enfoce rules which are counter to the written law and these are. However, the atf is obligated to apply the new rules and enforce them because the atf falls under the executive branch.
Its an attempt by Biden to widen the authority of the president to rule from his desk by executive order and action,, make law, and undermine and bypass the constitution and bypass congress.
“…but does give the atf authority to enforcement rules new and old but does not give them authority to enfoce rules which are counter to the written law and these are.”
Seems the “Chevron Doctrine” permits executive branch to do as it pleases regarding interpretation of laws the executive branch is obligated to enforce, especially when the “interpretation” relates directly to agency regulations.
As noted before, the entire federal government may act as it pleases, at any time. The Constitution prevents no violation of our natural, civil and human rights. The Constitution provides only a potential means of later punishing a violation. Meanwhile, the government benefits until reversed either by court or legislative action.
No government is going to outlaw itself. :/
So… there’s a 73:1 ratio of these “ghost guns” to the homicides in which they’re involved? Say what?
You know the DOJ would be touting all the other violent crimes they were connected with if those numbers were bigger than … fewer than 1 every 5 days. Or if they constituted more than 1.4% of the total.
Where are they confiscating all these weapons if not at murders and other violent crimes?
Or is the big number just something pulled out of someone’s backside?
I know which way I’m betting.
(Yes, I also noticed they said “homicides”, not “murders”. And that could include defensive uses where the aggressor was killed. It just makes their numbers look even worse.)
I want to see hard evidence that just having a serial number on the firearm contributes in some significant way to solving gun crimes. It’s easy to think “tracing” is some infallible means of finding criminals, but I’m dead sure it doesn’t work that way.
“I want to see hard evidence that just having a serial number on the firearm contributes in some significant way to solving gun crimes.”
Let me explain all this…
First, if tracing results in finding only one criminal, it is worth it (sound familiar?).
Second, tracing always leads to the original buyer (even if they have been dead for 50yrs).
Third, starting with the original buyer, the chain of custody always leads to the person who used the firearm in commission of a crime.
Fourth, once the perp is identified, tracing will always lead to other crimes and criminals who used that same gun in commission of other crimes, at other times and locations.
Fifth, untraceable firearms are a dangerous public health threat. Once the user(s) of an untraceable gun is identified, that person can be directed to wear a surgical mask when in the presence of firearms (wrapping a condom over the muzzle of future firearm possession can be posed as a required measure to prevent future spread of stolen firearm disease).
Sixth, and last, it is settled science that untraceable firearms are second among the leading causes of climate change.
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