A Day of Reflection, Part One: "It's amazing we get anything done."

The GI in the foreground is sending the signal. The soldier in the background is cranking the generator that makes the radio operate. We need both.

Sigh. One step forward, one step sideways, half-a-step back. At least that's the way it has seemed this past couple of weeks.

That we have placed the NRA, the Brady bunch and the ATF under the same washtub (as my teen-aged father and his brothers once did with a dog, a cat and a chicken) and are tapping the electric fence to it is undeniable. Yet the plainly audible barking-squawking-banshee-screeching harmony we sought has yet to manifest itself.

The NRA:

On the pistol-grip shotgun issue, although the NRA has yet to make a public sound, I am told that between the Homintern Lairds of Fairfax, the NRA-ILA and certain members of the board there is full auto, belt-fed finger pointing going on. This issue threatens their traditional arms-length symbiosis with the ATF. What will the ATF do? Will millions of NRA members become instant felons? "How did you (we) miss this and let it get to this point?" they are demanding of each other. They know that they will have to do something public about this after the accumulated self-damage they did in endorsing Dems in the last election. Their income is down, their membership is declining. They MUST do something that is against their most ingrained inclinations and they don't like it. Not even their Internet flacks like General Sebastian Snowflake are taking up this issue -- probably on orders. And yet, time is against them. What happens when the membership finds out that they have to turn in their property and the NRA knew about it all along? Step One: Dangle private parts over wringer washer. Step Two: Rotate handle. Step Three: Scream bloody murder as testicles are crushed. Yet what alternative do they have?

The Brady Bunch:

Nothing but silence, although we hear their lawyers are researching the subject diligently. Helmke and Co. still doesn't trust me, but they will find my footnotes indisputable. What then shall they do? They have been looking to take on the Obamanoid ATF and Justice department on the subject of weak-kneed enforcement and I have just given them two heavy clubs to beat Holder et. al. with. Time is not on their side either. For one thing, another competing gun grab organization may jump into the fray for the benefit of THEIR donor list and the Brady bunch will end up looking like me-toos. Second, if they do nothing they will be in the same spot as the NRA. When this comes out -- and it WILL come out -- they will look like the same sort of do-nothings. All talk and no action.

The ATF:

Reports are that the revoking of the Airsoft ruling was upon the order of the adults at Main Justice. Reports are also that the career of Teresa Ficaretta, former darling of the Chief Counsel's Office, is either hanging by a thread or is in freefall and we haven't heard the crash because she is somewhere between the roof of
the Concrete Asshole of the Universe and the bottom of the elevator shaft. Most of the recent screw-ups can be attached to her -- fairly and unfairly -- and even her so-called friends are running away from her as fast as straw-stuffed scarecrows from a napalming, praying they don't get set afire themselves.

They know now that EVERYTHING they have done, are doing and may do WILL be subject to congressional oversight under oath. And as I told a friend this morning, the televised testimony in front of Congress of CPT R.A. Bear, the stuffed child's toy that the ATF spent more than two years and millions of dollars chasing in the unsuccessful effort to bolster the economic Waco they were inflicting on an innocent man, will be worth a division of constitutional militia.

Main Justice has them on a short leash. Deputy Director Melson is only now fully understanding how the Chief Counsel's Office Cabal has sandbagged him and opened the agency to complete discredit in the bright sunlight of this Congressional new day. The agency is riven with purges and rumors of purges to come. The FBI is licking its chops that they will finally win the bureaucratic war they have been fighting since 1968. They don't want to enforce the gun laws, mind you, and they don't want ATF personnel, viewing them as beneath their standards. The administration will likely try to short-circuit oversight by folding the ATF under the preemptive rubric of "reform" -- the gun cop mission will go to DHS along with some of the personnel and the dregs will go to TSA so they can leer at and grope innocent airplane travelers for the rest of their sorry taxpayer funded careers.

But the ATF, hoist upon the petard of Chief Counsel's Office felonies, will be no more. Which is why we must get the word out before the malefactors can slip away into the bureaucratic night. In this sense, time is not on our side either. We've got the dog (ATF), the cat (NRA) and the chicken (the Brady bunch) all under the washtub, but the current to the electric fence has not shocked them enough -- the hands on the generator are not turning fast enough.

Which leads me to consideration of the disappointments of the past two weeks. We have made a breakthrough, but the follow-on force has yet to arrive to exploit it.

Speaking to this point, a fellow blogger wrote these words to me late last night:

What really gets me--and I shouldn't be surprised by now, but still get very disappointed--is the way this story is being suppressed--one would think the "gun groups" would be interested--not NRA, which we know is compromised, but you'd think Pratt at least would pick it up and give it legs. Naturally, it's not in the interest of the pragbloggers to tell their readers the people they revile have uncovered information they need to know -- but then again, anyone who follows them is too ignorant and brainwashed to discard their petty hatreds and understand the implications. . . And, of course, it doesn't fit the meme for "Authorized Journalists."

I think my biggest disappointment is in our regular readers, though---most of them are mere consumers and will do nothing more than offer the occasional anonymous comment -- God forbid they should actually make it a mission to spend five minutes every day sharing links via email or on forums.

If I ever decide to just hang it up and take care of Number One, their apathy at lifting a finger and helping spread the word will be the prime reason.

No idea how to break out of the obscurity box. It's amazing we get anything done.

I, too, have been disappointed with the failure to get the word out. For the only way this works is for the prags of ARF.com and the Class III folks at SubGuns to be fully informed of the precariousness of their positions.

I posted a challenge at SubGuns to fact-check me on both issues. The post only lasted an hour or two. After a burst of email hatred from the prags, the word has apparently gone out from the Lairds of Fairfax to studiously ignore the issue, lest we have a "Night of the Living Fudds."

Even Rachel Madcow has refused to take the bait.

So I must ask you, at least all of you who have yet to respond to my previous cries for assistance, to go back over the first issue -- the threat of Destructive Device classification of all twelve gauge pistol-grip shotguns -- and write letters, make phone calls, send emails and contribute discussion comments to every congressman, senator, guns rights organization and blog that you can. Chum the waters by pointing to the threat and asking everyone to look into it.

Only with immediate publicity can we beat the Feds to the punch. They are a bureaucratic colossus. We are nimble guerrillas. Let us act like guerrillas. Let us beat them to the punch. Crank the generator on the electric fence. Make them howl.

Mike
III