In addition to the ATF’s threatening letters, it has recently come to our attention that ATF has formulated secret internal guidance documents “to assist ATF personnel tasked with differentiating so-called ‘solvent-traps’ from firearm silencers” and to assist “with identifying certain machinegun conversion devices commonly referred to as” FRTs.5 These documents
contain summaries of the standards that the Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division purportedly uses to classify items.6 Disturbingly, ATF made these documents available only to those tasked with enforcing the law, rather than those who strive to comply with it. Indeed, ATF marked these documents as “Law Enforcement Sensitive” to conceal them from the firearms industry and the American public.
We find the ATF’s attempt to conceal its interpretations of the law disturbing. In a free society, “Every citizen is presumed to know the law.”7 Thus, as the Supreme Court has said, “‘it needs no argument to show that all should have free access’ to [the law’s] contents,”8 including, in addition to the text of a statute, to those materials which constitute “the authentic exposition and
interpretation of the law.”9
Our government, including the ATF, has a duty to inform Americans what they must do to comply with federal law, especially when the conduct involves the exercise of an enumerated constitutional right and violations could result in a penalty of up to ten years in prison. The use of “secret” law is anathema to our system of government. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said, “[a] designation by an unnamed official, using unspecified criteria, that is put in a desk drawer, taken out only for use at a criminal trial, and immune from any evaluation by the judiciary, is the sort of tactic usually associated with totalitarian régimes.” 10 Yet, that is exactly what the ATF has done in this and other cases. 11
With this attempted secret regulation, the ATF shows an abject disregard for the fundamental principles of due process and accountable governance. Federal agencies cannot enforce the law in this manner.
Originally Posted by holmes168
Reply With Quote