https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/us/ex-at ... index.html
The upshot is that the AR15—and a number of other firearms as well such as the Ruger MkII AND 22/45 pistols for instance—doesn't have a receiver as defined by the regulations, and so the ATF have been deliberately and arbitrarily adding control of these firearms under the regulations, because it would be "bad" if they weren’t controlled. Read the article to get the finer points, but I can’t help but think that this will go only one of two ways.In his 23 years with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Dan O'Kelly was one of the agency's top gun experts.
He served for five years as the lead firearms technology instructor at the ATF National Academy, where he co-wrote the curriculum for incoming agents.
These days, however, O'Kelly is using his formidable firearms expertise and institutional knowledge of the ATF to take aim at his former employer.
He's at the center of a brewing legal dispute that federal prosecutors say has the potential to upend the 1968 Gun Control Act and "seriously undermine the ATF's ability to trace and regulate firearms nationwide."
As O'Kelly sees it, the ATF has been deliberately misinterpreting a key gun control regulation for decades because officials fear that following the letter of the law would allow criminals to build AR-15s and other firearms piece by piece with unregulated parts.
The way I am HOPING for is that these guns will become unregulated. What I FEAR is that Congress will give voice to its totalitarian tendencies, and the regulations will be redefined even more stringently. If that happens, the proverbial Armageddon would be a change requiring a 4473 to purchase any single part of a gun. You want to put a Giessele trigger or a new muzzle brake in/on your AR? Gotta fill out a 4473. Want to put a carbon fiber-wrapped barrel on your 1022? Gotta fill out a 4473. Want to buy an RMR cut slide for your Glock 19? Gotta fill out a 4473. Armageddon on steroids: want to buy a box of new magazines for your AR? Each one requires a 4473, and depending on where you live, might exceed the number of guns you’re allowed to purchase in a month.
I’d really like to see the ATF's mandate trimmed back, but in the entire history of the United States, I don’t believe there’s a record of the fedgov’t ever agreeing to cut back on the scope of authority it claims for itself. I think that, strictly speaking, this former agent is 100% correct, and he’s to be commended for being honest. But I no longer trust gov’t to react well to challenges to its authority, PARTICULARLY when it has been caught breaking its own laws. In those cases, it tends to merely double down on its tyranny.
If POTUS Trump really wants to be a "friend" of the Second Amendment and the rest of the Constitution, he should start removing power from those bureaucracies that infringe upon the Bill of Rights.