Harbor Freight is going to be very upset when they get raided by the ATF for their stockpile of post-86 machinegun vises.
I hate to see this happen, but it is unfortunately a known risk when dealing with the ATF and their endless supply of zip ties and shoelaces.
The worst part is that no matter how many letters they send you to inform you that a certain device is legal, it only takes one letter that says it is no longer legal to wipe out all the others.
Scott, its an absolutely horrible situation that you are caught in as a victim of circumstance. If this submission had been 5 years ago, I bet it would have sailed through with ease.Originally Posted by A&S Conversions
The part of all of this that really chaps my ass is that you came up with a super-innovative product, did everything right, and [potentially] may not reap the just rewards for your hard work and creativity. All of us on this board support you and wish you the best. I'm confident that there is a modification that they would deem 'acceptable'. If it was me, I would do whatever possible to establish a working level of trust and respect with the FTD (which might mean getting a 02/SOT just to enable communications), try to get detailed inputs regarding their likes and dislikes on such matters, then submit a redesign that specifically addresses their issues.
I don't think suing will net a positive return on investment. The only two parties guaranteed to win every lawsuit are the lawyers being paid on each side.
I look forward to purchasing a redesigned Tenko someday...you can do it!
v/r,
Esox
p.s. - and if you ever do need a donor to a legal fund, I'm in.
Going after them trying for movement I think made you the new Len Savage in the vein of anything you submit in the future being looked at they’ll have an eye towards complete obstruction.
Perhaps create an interesting title 1 item or accessory that catches fire. Bypass the goons.
Poll numbers can obviously be off, and in relation to something like this it's suspect (just like the polls about weed usage were always off because there was some percentage of people who wouldn't respond truthfully no matter what). Nonetheless, the science of statistical significance is well grounded in years of work on this, and the real number is unlikely to be wildly off. In particular, if you dig into that poll and the questions asked, the way more interesting figure is that around 44% of households own guns. And although I'm sure that the error margin on this poll is huge (they conduct it once a year with a pretty small sample size), let's assume that they conduct it as specified, and let's see how this breaks down.
There's about 128 million households in the US, so about 57 million households own guns. In states like California, New York, Hawaii and others gun ownership is heavily restricted and difficult which clearly has a chilling effect. The RAND corporation recently published their long running look at gun owning households in the US which actually underestimates the figures reported by Gallup, but lets assume that it's ordering of the states with the lowest household gun ownership is correct. Looking at just the worst states (California, Mass, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, New Jersey and Rhode Island), gives us around 23% of US households (a bit over 29 million total households) live in these states with highly restricted gun ownership. Looking at the Rand numbers, only around 10%, or 2.9 million households in these states own firearms. If we remove these households and gun owning households from the overall numbers we see that there are 54 million gun owning households in the "friendlier" states, which states cumulatively have just 99 million total households. In these states, therefore, nearly 55% of households own guns.
Broadly speaking, this figure seems about right to me. In most of the US (outside of a few gun unfriendly states), a lot of people, even a majority, own guns, but many don't. Especially once you start factoring out people in nursing homes, retirement communities, colleges, etc, I suspect you're looking at north of 60% of households in these "friendlier" states own guns.
The really interesting question is what would happen in a state like California if their gun laws were significantly rolled back? Would 50-60% of households run out and buy a gun? Probably not, but I bet a lot would. Anecdotally a lot of Californians would own guns but the difficulty of getting one and FUD around ownership prevent it: I had someone tell me that they'd buy a gun, especially with everything going on in the world, but they didn't want the police to show up to inspect it whenever they wanted. Yeah, anecdote is not the singular of data, but it's highly likely that if these unfriendly states had less restrictive laws the "natural" percentage of gun owning households in the US is around 50-55%.
Anyway, that's a long way of saying that a lot of Americans live in gun owning households, much more so than the "32% own guns" figure would tend to suggest.
On the other hand, when it comes to NFA stuff, the number of machine gun owners is tiny, and the ATF can be dicks all they want, because there's not enough of us to do anything about it. The one silver lining in all of this is the absolutely huge increase in NFA forms processed in 2020 -- the ATF reports processing over half a million NFA forms in 2020. Now, some of those were form 2s and 5s, but I would be willing to bet that most of that growth was from first time silencer purchasers. All of a sudden there's starting to be a lot of NFA owners in the US, and that's a good thing for reigning in the ATF's abuses.
In the meantime, I too am waiting with baited breath for a Tenko to get approved. Good luck and steady on through the bureaucracy.
Every poll and study shows firearm ownership becoming a smaller portion of the voting public and more concentrated in fewer voters.
It's a multi-decade trend shown by uncountable polls and studies.
Folks who don't like this brush away the polls as wrong, illegitimate, BS.
Yet these same chest-pounding gun owners bring forth nothing but emotion to counteract these uncountable studies and polls, as if gun owners are 'afraid' to admit they own a gun.
Folks, the demographics are against us, the voting and legislative trends are against us.
Stop catering to your emotions and adjust to the reality we are facing.
My name is actually Scott and I really do live in Texas.
I know, not very creative but it is factual.
By the way - Facebook is truly evil; resist the urge to participate.
Flippie, remember that statistics is only as good as your sample. Larger the sample size the more accurate the data. If the data is bad the result is skewed. I used to do this to my statistics professors all the time to prove a point and to drive them nuts. The result never matched their ideal but was 100% legitimate according to how statistics works. We used to call it fake math because you can influence the result. Can't do that with things like algebra and calculus. It either is or it isn't.
Unlike texas Scott I do not deal in emotion. I also don't deal in statistics. In my line of work statistics gets people killed further down the line. Same goes for using emotion to make decisions. People die, satellites fall from the sky, airplanes crash, etc when you use statistics and emotion to make decisions. It's either good or it isn't. Not worth the minor chance (ooh, statistics!) to accidentally let a bad part go through because statistically it was good.
I distrust gallup due to their past catastrophically poor data collection, including possible data laundering and distrust any polls with data relating to firearms ownership in the US. Most gun owners just won't answer or wont answer truthfully. We see this all the time on a smaller scale including just gun related stickers and decals on vehicles. No advertising for fear of being targeted.
It really is remarkable to see so many on a NFA forum that roll over or hold extremely counter views to the community they are part of. That is the reality we are facing and I've called.oit a few people here for it and many others elsewhere. It really is a.concerning reality when you see folks like MG owners here flaunting their NFA toys then screeching about how bumpfire stocks are terrible things and deserve to be banned. Just one example.
The reality is the legislative trends are much easier when you have a dictator such as in my state. Much easier to push crap through as a dictator with majority support when the reps have absolutely zero way to be heard except not showing up and preventing a quarum. That's is the reality we are in. When the reps ignore those they are support to work for, that's right, your reps are supposed to work for the people, and do their agenda. When you can't even recall a govorner because the state keeps changing the requirements to get the recall started as happens every time in my state. When a govorner says you need to report your friends, family and neighbors for spending time with their families because it's no different than reporting a noise complaint like my govorner has. That is the reality we live in. It's a shit show.
The reality of the matter is instead of attacking people, texas Scott, you need to be joining forces. Instead of insulting people, texas Scott, you need to understand them and find a way to relate to them. It's actions such as yours that make the 2A community an elitist and toxic environment. We are in this together no matter how bit or small our numbers are. United we stand. Divided we fall. Even outlr communist enemy seems to understand this better than the 2A community. Instead of calling someone a chest pounding gun owner (super ironic coming from a.MG owner, literally the "elite" of gun owners) maybe you can find something positive to say or do that will help the community or to educate people. Instead of throwing around emotions throw round facts. Fact is .0003% is a pretty poor sample for a population of 320,000,000+/- a few hundred thousand or better. I could do the same.poll at my local grocery store Inna couple hours with the exact opposite results and have just as credible data and results. No emotions or cheat thumping required. Just a little bit of funny math that drives me crazy because it's so easy to influence.
Sorry to pick on you, texas Scott. You are not the only one around here with your views, just the only one brave enough to speak up. Differing views are good. We just can't let them get in the way of our common goal. Keep the community alive and well and support A&S Scott as well as the rest of the folks working on Mac stuff on our behalf
LOL. Look in the mirror, argue with yourself, and keep the rest of us out of it. LOL
The dumb thing here is that you can take a 1911 pistol upper assembly clamp it together with a round inside and flick the hammer and make it shoot. Sounds like they went to the ends of the earth to make up some BS. Anybody can fire any kind of an upper with a clamp.
You can put on a body armor plate, put a mag in a Lage upper, and likely press the rear of the upper to your chest to make it fire if you wanted to...albeit very badly...
^^^
I agree with their being more new gun owners. 2020 was the year of new gun owners. Virginia has parked their AWB talks. Short-term trends are definitely in our favor. Going back to the tread topic, it is very concerning that the atf used C-clamped sheet metal to formulate a lower around an upper and then call it a “gun.”
I can’t think of any semi auto anything aside from an M1 Garand that you couldn’t do the same with. It almost reeks of a “let’s find a way to not approve this.” Sounds like it *only* took c clamping tons of sheet metal down to something and a years worth of attempts in order to get it there. Ironically, if I went and C-clamped sheet metal around a spare OEM MAC upper and blasted away *i* would be the illegal maker of a machine gun. If they do it something else, then it’s them calling that item a machine gun?
By the ATFs own logic, it appears all mac uppers (including OEM uppers) can be machine guns then, if C-clamping steel to the back is the benchmark.
Last edited by cjsoccer3; 01-29-2021 at 07:13 PM.
^^^
When I was approx 8-9, a bunch of us were playing and one boy threw a rock (maybe used a slingshot? About 40 years ago) at another, hitting his pocket. The "victim" had a shotgun shell in that pocket; the rock struck the primer, causing the shotgun shell to go off (causing a burn, a hole in the pants, and a good scare for all of us)
I suppose, according to ATF, the rock and pocket made a gun!
12ga shell with wax on primer w a bb and tape to hold it, in a 1 liter coke bottle thrown up In the air
Isn’t a gun. Just letting you know.
Found this image of a recent ATF hire that may shed some light on things
We have been working on some modifications. I think we have the modifications that will make firing without the M10 lower very difficult. Once I get the engineer to draw it up, I'll start having the parts made and modified. We will be updating once we have the submission ready to submit. Thank you for the support.
Scott
Manager A&S Conversions L.L.C.
That's awesome!
Glad to hear it buddy. I would expect another really long delay. I hope you can do what you can to minimize fixed costs in the meantime.
We have moved into a smaller space and dropped our rental costs by almost 40%. The biggest expense is the money we borrowed to finish the project. We are modifying the design not starting from scratch. Hopefully the design changes will do it, but I would think once we resubmit, it will take months to find out. Fingers crossed.
Scott
Manager A&S Conversions L.L.C.
Scott, I was talking to some BATFE agents today. They mentioned your submission. They explained how the tech branch ruled on your submission.
https://maf-arms.com/product/magic-atf-ball/
Feel the love. I would have found that very funny a couple of years ago. I used to think that the FATD was just dreaming up stuff at random. I think now, like the rest of the country, what should be based on logic and the letter of the law, is now politically motivated, guided by bureaucrats at the top. I could be wrong but as I recall SIG submitted the pistol brace. The FATD determination stated that it could be used to shoulder the pistol. SIG sued them stating that while shouldering the brace might be possible, but that is not how the brace was designed to be used. The manufacturer can not be held responsible for misuse of their product. The court agreed with a sizable settlement. So with extra Congressional scrutiny, the FATD based their determinations on the law. They didn't approve everything, but I do think that determinations became much more fair.
Then Trump told them to make bump stocks illegal. Trump's whole presidency has been about, do what I want or I'll fire you and hire someone else that will do what I want. So with no change in the law, poof bump stocks are machineguns. I think that emboldened the FATD to go back to their "we don't want new products so we are going to basically deny anything new ".
My last letter was actually to the guy that oversees the FATD. He did bother to respond. But I did get a letter from the Acting Chief of the FATD. More of the BS glossing over the fact that they made a receiver. The acting Chief not only continued the machinegun BS, but claimed that he had reviewed the original determination and agreed that the original determination was wrong and the original submission was a machinegun. And of course the original submission wasn't fired because they would have had to pull their M10 lower and an AR upper. Apparently he didn't bother to look at the two pictures at the end of the adapter on their M10 all together before they fired it with a caption that said just that.
The worst part was that he said:
"Independent of the determination that the submitted “conversion” device was itself a machinegun, FTISB also determined that the submitted device is not a caliber conversion, but is actually a complete redesign of the registered M10 machinegun as registered in the National
Firearms Registry and Transfer Record (NFRTR). The assembly of the device with the M10 receiver is therefore the making of a new "machinegun." Therefore, even if the “caliber conversion device” was not classified a “firearm,” the use of the M10 is anentirely distinct design from the registered M10 weapon system. "
All I can say is Wow.
Scott
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