Amid all the stories of transgender controversies, gun control debates that will lead to nothing, and general social media dumbfuckery, it’s been hard to find fresh or even fresh-adjacent topics to discuss. Believe me, I can talk about the aforementioned topics all day, but I don’t want to bore you. That’s what my joke writer is for.
But hope springs eternal if you just look around long enough, and buddy did I ever strike pay dirt! During a recent House hearing, the current Director of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Steven Dettelbach had a bit of trouble answering a firearms question: what is an assault weapon. Of course, he had trouble because he’s not a biologist…
But this got me thinking about the ATF as a government entity. Do we need it? What does it do? Can it be renamed the Bureau of a Good Time on a Holiday Weekend? These and other questions are going to be answered…somewhere else, but I’ll give it a shot.
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms
What the Left thinks it means – a government agency designed to regulate the items in the agency’s name
What it really means – a really bad idea made worse through incompetence
The ATF’s website describes its mission as:
ATF’s responsibilities include the investigation and prevention of federal offenses involving the unlawful use, manufacture, and possession of firearms and explosives; acts of arson and bombings; and illegal trafficking of alcohol and tobacco products. The ATF also regulates, via licensing, the sale, possession, and transportation of firearms, ammunition, and explosives in interstate commerce.
Judging from the number of people who shoot off fireworks in my neighborhood around the 4th of July, it’s clear the ATF is doing a bang-up job, if you’ll pardon the pun. And if you don’t, fuck you!
Anyway, the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of the ATF’s job is three-fold: investigate offenses, prevent potential offenses, and regulate a bunch of shit involving, well, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. As of the most recent data I could find (Fiscal Year 2020 for the people playing along at home), the ATF had over 5000 employees across multiple areas, with an annual budget of $1.4 billion. That’s a shit-ton of money spent per employee! So, how effective are they?
That depends on who you ask. Many on the Left see room for improvement, especially in the area of gun violence prevention. Others aren’t so optimistic, citing ineffectiveness and a lack of respect as reasons they aren’t highly regarded and respected in their roles.
Maybe it’s me, but I think the real reason they’re not heralded for their work is how the agency fucked up in Waco, Texas, with the Branch Davidians. For those of you who don’t remember (and, for that, I envy you), the Branch Davidians were a Christian cult whose leader, David Koresh, was accused of some serious shit ranging from stockpiling illegal weapons to child abuse to statutory rape. And 51 days later, all chaos broke loose. Although the details are still sketchier than a mixed drink handed to a hot girl in a sleazy nightclub owned by Hunter Biden, the general consensus was the ATF and the FBI shared blame for things going pear-shaped.
Granted, we shouldn’t base our opinions of a government agency on one fuck-up, even if it’s the mother of all fuck-ups. That’s why I have more examples! And, as you might expect, anti-gun groups keep hammering the ATF to do its job.
Which, according to these groups, is to do what they say.
Which means a) the ATF shouldn’t listen to groups who need people to die to remain politically relevant, b) the ATF must really be fucked up, and c) the ATF needs to be abolished, like, yesterday.
Let’s be frank (especially if your name is Frank), the ATF can’t regulate its way out of a plain brown bag holding a bottle of cheap hooch, let alone the breadth of issues the agency is supposed to address. And for $1.4 billion, we should expect a level of competency even an amoeba could meet.
And let the ATF limbos under it without even having to bend over.
Of course, the Left doesn’t see this as a problem so long as the ATF continues to push for more gun regulations. And with the Biden Administration pushing for more as part of a “gun safety” push, it’s a safe guess the Left doesn’t want the ATF going anywhere for a while.
In the meantime, though, it’s hard to justify why we even have an ATF if they don’t know what they’re doing. I’m sure there are some good folks there (law of averages and such), but that doesn’t make them immune to the legitimate criticism of how the ATF sucks at its job.
What’s more, they are part of two rampant problems the Left doesn’t want to address: redundancy, and redundancy. Not to mention redundancy. So much of what the ATF does is also being done by other federal agencies or can be folded into existing roles without a loss of effectiveness. After all, when you’re effectiveness is a wash, you can’t really lose effectiveness by transferring duties to another team.
Granted, I am biased here because I’m definitely on the “smaller government is better government” bandwagon, so obviously I want to get rid of as much government as possible without damaging the country. Having said that, I think the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms has overstayed its welcome and should be heading to the Great Bureaucratic Shitstorm in the Sky. For the money we spend, we should be getting results other than “well, we fucked up again.”
In their defense, though, “Well, we fucked up again” is the unofficial slogan of the Puddin’ Head Joe Administration.
Tag: guns
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
Over the July 4th weekend, there was another mass shooting, this one in Highland Park, Illinois. The shooter (who will remain nameless because he’s a piece of shit) opened fire on a parade, killing seven and injuring several more. Although many people on both sides of the aisle expressed sympathy and some used it to advance the need for stricter gun control, some Leftists asked an unexpected question.
Where was Kyle Rittenhouse?
An odd flex, to be sure, but one not without a purpose.
Kyle Rittenhouse
What the Left thinks it means – a murderer who is the poster child for mass shooters everywhere
What it really means – a young man who beat long odds against Leftist disinformation
To gain the necessary context for the current discussion, we have to go waaaaaaaaaaay back to…2020. During the mostly peaceful rioting…I mean protesting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse went to offer help. Armed with a medical kit and an AR-15, he waded into the middle of a devolving situation and attempted to prevent a flaming dumpster fire from causing property damage, both literally and figuratively.
After that, the rioters…I mean protesters started chasing him, some with the intent of using his head for a pinata. When it became evident the people chasing him weren’t going to ask if he wanted smores, but instead wanted to do him bodily harm, Rittenhouse shot and killed 2 people and injured a third in self defense. The subsequent trial acquitted him of any wrong-doing and Rittenhouse left the courtroom a free man.
Of course, that’s not how the Left tells the tale.
From the outset, Leftists attempted to paint Rittenhouse as a trigger-happy kid looking to get in the middle of the protest and start trouble. They went so far as to say not only was he guilty of murder, but he did so by crossing state lines with a gun he obtained illegally and with the sole intent of killing blacks. No amount of evidence, testimony, and a little thing the kids call common sense could sway them. To Leftists, Rittenhouse was worse than Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Nickelback put together!
Naturally, when Rittenhouse was acquitted because a) the evidence, testimony, and common sense were on his side, and b) the prosecution lawyers were 20th degree black belts in dumbassery, Leftists couldn’t take it. After all the time and energy they spent to make him look guilty as hell, he walked. I’ve seen little league parents take losses better than Leftists.
If that were the end of the story, we wouldn’t still be talking about Rittenhouse and this would be one of my shortest Leftist Lexicon entries in history. But the Left has this core flaw: they hold a grudge. If you beat them in spite of their best efforts, they will never let you live it down, and everything they say and do to oppose you is justified in their minds. Just ask Clarence Thomas about his experiences being a Leftist target for close to 40 years.
With Rittenhouse, the Left have a ready-made whipping boy (as opposed to a Ready-Whip made boy) to bring up whenever there’s a shooting, no matter how tangential and strenuous the connection is. Given enough time, Leftists might connect Rittenhouse to another shooting because they both wear pants.
Note to Leftists: that was a joke, not a suggestion.
Since they’re already conditioned to believe the worst in Rittenhouse, Leftists have no problem extending their caricature to any situation they can use to perpetuate the myth. And each time the myth gets repeated, the truth gets further out of reach for everyone except those who have this stubborn belief the facts might actually matter when it means the difference between character affirmation and character assassination.
The thing that really pisses me off about the Left’s treatment of Rittenhouse is how dehumanizing they are towards him. Whether you agree with his decision to shoot three people, there is still a young man behind the rhetoric coming from both sides, a young man who made a difficult decision and has to deal with the consequences of his actions even if the legal consequences are a moot point. I don’t know him personally, so you can take my observations with a Great Salt Lake of salt, but the vibe I get from him isn’t one of a heartless killing machine full of rage and hatred. What I see is someone who has been through Hell and lived to tell the tale. No matter what, his actions have a psychological toll only worsened by misinformed judgmental assholes whose knowledge of the facts is scarcer than baby formula right now. Besides, I have the market for judgmental assholes cornered.
I know it’s dirt simple for Leftists to get hate clicks by taking as-subtle-as-King-Kong-in-a-neon-jumpsuit jabs at Kyle Rittenhouse, but it serves no substantive purpose. At best, you are only perpetuating the echo chamber. At worst, you are setting a young man up to fail so you can point and say “See? We were right all along!” when he inevitably fails. The difference is Rittenhouse isn’t a guy like George Zimmerman who was a fuck-up of a person before he got famous or infamous as the case may be. He’s a young man who tried to do the right thing in the midst of people actively doing the wrong thing. Of course, if he turns out to be Zimmerman 2.0 later in life, I will happily retract my statement because I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong. That’s more than you’ll get from any Leftist.
For now, though, linking him to every mass shooting is low-hanging fruit and intellectually lazy thinking, even in jest. Of course, if you’re serious, do us a favor and get some scissors with the rounded ends so you don’t hurt somebody, ‘kay?
What is an AR-15?
Most people would say an Assault Rifle, after all that’s what the AR means. And they would be wrong. AR stands for ArmaLite Rifle, the original manufacturer of the weapon.
The AR-15 has been copied by multiple manufactures over the decades since its introduction in 1956. And are commonly called an AR-15 even though they are truly an AR-15 style rifle.
The term Assault Rifle is debatable. Since “assault” is an action and thus any rifle can be used in an assault and be called an assault rifle in my book. Hell you can have an assault screwdriver if you use one in an assault.
But this is how the US Military defines an Assault Rifle:
- It must be capable of selective fire. (that means Semi-Automatic, Fully Automatic, and Burst)
- It must have an intermediate-power cartridge: more power than a pistol but less than a standard rifle or battle rifle, examples of intermediate cartridges are the 7.92×33mm Kurz, the 7.62×39mm and 5.56×45mm NATO.
- Its ammunition must be supplied from a detachable box magazine.
- It must have an effective range of at least 300 meters (330 yards).
The Colt AR-15, the most common AR-15 rifle in civilian hands, is semi-automatic-only. It is not capable of selective fire and therefore NOT an assault rifle by definition.
Semi-automatic weapons are the most common form of firearms today in both handguns and rifles and they have been around for a century. Semi-automatic means you don’t have to cock the weapon every time you fire a round. The next round loads automatically for easy firing.
The Browning BAR MK 3 is the same as any AR-15. Except it doesn’t look like a scary military weapon. Which is really why some people seem to hate the AR-15 style rifle.
Firearm enthusiasts like the AR-15 mainly due to the weapons versatility and dependability. A tried and true design that takes a lot of punishment.
So it’s not really the weapon that is the problem. We have had semi-automatic rifles and pistols for more than 100 years at this point. Although we have had mass shootings documented as far back as the 1920’s. A time period of high crime, gangsters, and fully automatic weapons. I’m guessing that mass shootings go back to the beginning of firearms.
Yes the weapon makes it easier to kill innocent people. But it shouldn’t be punished, nor should law abiding people. The weapon is necessary for a free people to remain free against an oppressive government. When a government becomes contrary to the Will of the People. Guns are the first victims.
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
In case you’ve been living under a rock recently (and given housing prices these days, I wouldn’t blame you if you did), there was a little trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Kyle Rittenhouse faced some serious charges and was ultimately acquitted. At the heart of the trial and the situation that came before it is the concept of self-defense. Others have hashed out the various details of the case itself, so I won’t go too far into it because a) they’ve done a better job than your humble correspondent could, and b) you’ve probably heard as much, if not more, about it than I have.
With the Rittenhouse case, people on all sides have been focusing on whether what he did constitutes self-defense from a legal standpoint, but not too many have looked into the political aspect of it. That’s where I come in!
self-defense
What the Left thinks it means – an antiquated and unnecessary idea used to drive gun sales to paranoid right-wingers and gun nuts
What it really means – a principle essential to personal freedom
To put it mildly, things have gotten a little weird out there in the past couple of decades. Between Leftists LARPing as World War II vets and Trump supporters acting like, well, Trump supporters, you’re likely to find yourself in the middle of a conflict that can go pear-shaped before you can say, “Hey, isn’t that a pear?” Throw in all sorts of racial, sexual, and sociological contexts and you have a melting pot on the verge of melting down.
Such was the case in Kenosha, where protestors decided to do what the Property Brothers do, just in reverse. As you might expect, property owners (some of whom could be brothers, I suppose) didn’t like the impromptu Burning Man/Woodstock 99/any weekend with Lindsey Lohan vibe in the city. And the Kenosha police? Well, they were trying to maintain order by letting the protestors run around unopposed. Put another way, Barney Fife was Rambo next to these clowns.
Enter 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man who lived in Illinois, but worked in Kenosha. If the stories we’ve heard are true, he was asked to help protect a business in Kenosha, but he also wanted to tend to any wounded people there if needed. (Maybe it’s me, but that doesn’t sound like a bloodthirsty killer.) It wasn’t until he felt threatened by the riot…I mean protestors that he fired his rifle. And with one guy pointing a gun at him and another smacking him with a skateboard, it’s clear his life was in danger. Regardless of whether you feel he should have been there, the fact he was attacked and didn’t fire first shows he wasn’t there to get his jollies by killing people. He felt there was no other option than to shoot and he acted accordingly to protect himself in the absence of police.
And that’s why the Left lost their shit.
To the Left, anyone who isn’t one of them is a dullard and needs to have Leftists run his or her life. The minute you show even an iota of initiative to do something yourself is the minute you become dangerous to the Left. After all, if you don’t need government to do everything for you, you won’t need…them.
Thus, the Left has taken up the cause to make bureaucracy as expansive and essential as necessary so more and more of us become wards of the state. And they’ll make it happen by any means necessary, including convincing/coercing people to comply. Whether it’s an additional charge to make a payment with a credit card over the phone or demanding people jump through flaming hoops only to have the state reject a gun permit, the Left’s goal with all of that is to make sure they have their noses in our business for no legitimate reason. Just ask Glenn Beck about the hassles he endured just trying to put up a fence on his property in the Northeast.
So, when someone decides to cut out the middle-man and pass the savings directly on to, well, himself/herself, the Left loses money and power, which makes them more than a little cranky. You see, the Left believes in self-determination so long as you abide by whatever they deem appropriate. Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t, and as a result is being held up as what’s wrong with the Right, an enemy that needs no courtesy or even an obligation to get even basic facts right. He’s an “other” just as anyone else who defies the Left.
And, as a result, Rittenhouse may get Nick Sandmann rich soon. But that’s a blog post for another time.
Self-defense is the ultimate fuck-you to the Left. After all, the Left think only the police and military should have firearms. You know, the same police that are racist and the same military that is a tool of the elites? Mind-blowing hypocrisy aside, this is to a) make it harder for people to defend themselves, and b) creating a need that only government can fulfill. The only problem with that is time. Anyone who has spent any amount of time at the DMV knows the speed of government is usually inert. No matter how quickly your need is, the police will get there when they get there and not a second sooner.
Provided they come at all or aren’t hamstrung by politicians. Anyone want to turn your community into San Francisco East? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you don’t, but it’s the way the Left wants us to live: where the law-abiding are always the victims of the lawless. If you take up arms to protect yourself from being a victim, the Left can’t take it.
And that’s why you should do it, if you want to.
Really, it’s not a good reason why, but it’s certainly attractive. The best reason is because you have a right to be secure in your person, and if the government or its agents can’t or won’t respect that right, you shouldn’t be shamed into submission. If we take nothing else from the Kyle Rittenhouse situation, it’s that the best way to not be a victim is to understand what power you have and to never let anyone take it from you.
Oh, and that Leftists suck at keeping track of the facts of a criminal case before spewing ignorance.