Former ATF Agent: 60% Of Guns In America Don't Have A Single Part That Is Subject To Federal Law
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq6l3IMbDSY
Former ATF agent at center of legal dispute over AR-15
Federal law defines a key gun component as having four elements. A former ATF agent says the AR-15 part only has two.
Posted: Feb 7, 2020 1:50 PM
Updated: Feb 7, 2020 1:50 PM
Posted By: By Scott Glover Video by Collette Richards and Scott Glover
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.
He said he voiced his concerns to an ATF official two decades ago, but was rebuffed.
Now, however, his view is gaining traction in courtrooms around the country.
In December, a federal judge in Ohio dismissed weapons-related charges against two men after O'Kelly testified that the AR-15 part at issue in their case was not subject to federal law or regulation.
US District Court Judge James G. Carr for the Northern District of Ohio called the ATF's long-standing interpretation of the regulation "unreasonable and legally unacceptable."
ATF said in a statement to CNN that it was reviewing that case and others involving the issue and would have no further comment until that review is complete. The agency declined to discuss O'Kelly's testimony as an expert witness.
A brief history lesson in gun control legislation is required to understand the unfolding controversy and O'Kelly's role in it.
In the early days of gun control, every single part of a gun was subject to regulation under the Federal Firearms Act of 1938.
Three decades later, with the passage of the 1968 Gun Control Act, Congress sought to streamline what was considered an overly burdensome regulation by choosing a single part of a weapon as its key component for regulatory purposes.
Under the new law, manufacturers were required to stamp that part with a serial number for tracing purposes, and it would be subject to all the same laws as a completed firearm itself. Since 1993, that includes a provision that licensed dealers conduct criminal background checks on would-be buyers of the part, just as they would prospective purchasers of a fully intact firearm.
This key part, according to the Gun Control Act, was referred to as "the frame or receiver," which is, generally speaking, the body of a firearm in the area surrounding the trigger.
An accompanying federal regulation provided a precise, highly technical definition:
"That part of a firearm which provides housing for the hammer, bolt or breechblock, and firing mechanism, and which is usually threaded at its forward portion to receive the barrel."
The problem and this is where O'Kelly comes in is that he says roughly 60% of the guns in America do not have a single part that falls under that definition. The AR-15, for example, has a split receiver – one upper and one lower. Neither meets the requirement on its own.
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