Suits and Suspicions

First Half: The fur is flying in Virginia! Multiple lawsuits and defiance from attoneys general have smacked the Little Dumber Girl, Gov Spanberger after she signs the "assault weapons" ban.

Second Half: Royce cuts through all the smoke and mirrors of recent ATF platitudes and ask the rhetorical questio , "can the leopard really change its spots?"

Transcript

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Locked, loaded, and loud on the Shooting Straight radio podcast. This is all about firearms with a
heavy, heavy emphasis on the Second Amendment and all things pertaining thereto. I am Royce,
your cute, cuddly, huggable, lovable, squeezable host. And yes, I'm still saturated with gunshot
residue, toxic masculinity, and a faint yet also wildly tantalizing whiff of the cologne of my
people. And that would be hops number nine. We've got a lot to talk about today as usual.
First, I want to give a huge shooting straight shout out to Dale and his fellow over-the-road
truckers listening in Alabama and of course all over the country driving around and about. Dale,
thank you for what you do. You keep America supplied. And the topic that you recommended,
I will be speaking on that in the next episode. So make sure you tune in and share it around with
you. fellow truck drivers out there again thank you guys for what you do and thanks for listening
to the shooting straight radio podcast brother i appreciate it also to all of you that are
listening on my website shootingstraightradio.buzzsprout.com you can now also leave a voice
message there for me and not just a typed message i'm not able to respond on that medium,
but, uh, I definitely will respond to you at shooting straight radio podcast at gmail.com or
shooting straight radio show at gmail.com. And I usually respond within the hour,
but I want to offer a huge. Uh, apology to Pam. Uh, you sent me an email back on the third and I
didn't see it until today. I did respond to you. So check your inbox there.
And I did send some recommendations and, uh, feel, feel free to reach out with more questions about
the topic you asked about. And hopefully I can be a help to you out there. Let's start off with
Virginia. Little dumber girl. I'm sorry. Little commie girl,
Abigail Spanberger. As, of course, you may have already heard, she signed the woefully illegal
assault weapons ban into law there in Virginia. And that law is null and void on its face.
Worse than that, for her, multiple lawsuits were immediately rammed into her.
And the state of Virginia... After they had passed that there, you've got GOA,
the Virginia Citizens Defense League, John Crump, the Second Amendment Foundation,
the NRA, and the Firearms Policy Coalition all filed immediate lawsuit against her as soon as she
signed that. And the DOJ also lit up a lawsuit against her.
So better than that. We're going to look at a couple of other things. I'm going to tell you about a
Spotsylvania County Attorney General there, and we're going to look at what he's doing. But first,
where's my note here? Where's it at? Where's it at? Where's it at? Come on, Bartlett. Oh, yeah,
here we go.
There's an emergency injunction that has been filed against the implementation and enforcement.
of this assault weapons ban. So now little Miss Spanberger and all of her fellow filthy godless
communists there in Virginia are getting hit right and left with legal challenges already.
And it's looking like a good old fashioned legal Donnybrook. And I'm looking forward to what the
judges may say about this. The momentum certainly does seem to be in our favor right now.
So let's pray it continues that way. But back. to the Spotsylvania County.
the Virginia Commonwealth attorney general slammed their gun grab and called it unconstitutional.
And he said that he's not about to begin enforcing this so-called assault weapons ban.
He calls it radical and he's not going to enforce any of the public carry restrictions either.
So I like this. I tell you what, I love the fact that these people in high places,
still there are a few there with some. constitutional sense. And they are saying,
bull crap, we're not enforcing this. Good. Thank God for men like Ryan Mahaffey,
who has pretty much declared war on Governor Spanberger's assault weapons ban.
Here's an article, a brief blurb from an article by Jim Hoft from the Gateway Pundit.
And here it is. Commonwealth's Attorney General Ryan Mahaffey has officially declared war on
Governor Abigail Spanberger's tyrannical new assault weapons ban and public carry restrictions,
telling the local sheriff in black and white terms that these laws are unconstitutional and will
not be enforced in his county. Thank God for men like Mr.
Mahaffey. I think the rest of you attorneys general there in the various counties throughout the
state need to follow suit. because this is unconstitutional. It's obvious that it's
unconstitutional on its face. It is an attempted disarmament of the militia there in Virginia,
and it is absolutely a flagrant violation of the Supreme Law,
and it's an assault upon the security of the free state, therefore. So, this thing needs to take a
long walk off a short pier. Here's the rest of the article. In a bombshell May 15th letter to
Spotsylvania County Sheriff Roger Harris, Mr. Mahaffey blasted Virginia's newly enacted assault
weapons ban and public carry ban, arguing the laws directly conflict.
with Supreme Court precedent and Virginia's constitutional protections too,
not to mention the Supreme Law in both the Second and Fourth Amendment. The prosecutor cited major
Supreme Court rulings, including Heller and Bruin, arguing the state's new gun restrictions fail
the constitutional test laid out by the court. Just one day after Spanberger signed the bills into
law on May 14th, Mahaffey made it crystal clear. These infringements on our God-given right to
keep and bear arms are dead on arrival in his jurisdiction. Good. Mr.
Mahaffey, I pray that your attitude infects every law enforcement official throughout the entire
state of Virginia, and that includes all the attorneys general in every county.
So he put a letter, he sent a letter out to the sheriff there,
and it says, Dear Sheriff Harris, Today it has come to my attention that certain legislation
enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia was yesterday signed into law by the Governor of
Virginia to it, an assault weapons ban and public carry ban. I write to state that this legislation
is inconsistent with the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article 1,
Section 13 of the Virginia. Constitution. These laws are unconstitutional and cannot be legally
enforced. Woo, I love this guy. U.S. Supreme Court precedent expounds the Second Amendment right
of the people to keep and bear arms as necessary for a well-regulated militia under U.S.
v. Miller, and you remember me speaking about this in the last episode.
This is back from 1939 he's referencing, by the way. The second amendment secures the right of the
U S citizen soldier to arm himself with those instruments that quote,
have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.
The arms of a basic infantry men are the primary instruments of a militia.
The primary basic infantry weapon for the U.S. military is the M4A1 carbine,
equipped with a 30-round magazine. The most popular rifle in America, the AR-15,
is modeled after the M4A1. Well, that's incorrect, but hey, let the guy rant. And has an estimated
circulation of over 32 million. The fact of the matter there, Mr. Mahaffey,
just to throw in a kind and friendly correction. The M4 and the M16 both were modeled after the AR
-15. The AR-15 came first. Well, actually, the AR-10 came first,
and then the AR-15. And then the AR-15 was adopted into service for the U.S.
military, and that was what was issued first before the M16 was select fire.
Anyway, back to the article and Mr. Mahaffey's letter to Sheriff Harris.
He said in District of Columbia v. Heller 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second
Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms that are in, quote, common use. I don't
like that statute, that standard for lawful purpose. In New York State Rifle and Pistol Association
Incorporated v. Bruin, the Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment restrictions must be consistent
with the nation's historical tradition of firearms.
The law not only permitted but required its citizens to arm themselves with the instruments of a
basic infantryman. a musket and 20 rounds for service in the militia.
The assault weapons ban and public carry ban are undoubtedly inconsistent with the historical
tradition of Virginia as articulated by Miller and are thus unconstitutional under Bruin.
However, I'm sorry, moreover, Heller secures the right of Virginians to keep and bear the most
popular rifle in America, an AR-15, for the lawful purpose of readiness for service in the
Virginia Militia. That's Virginia Code Annotated Statute 44-1 from 2026.
He said, as the founders intended. I tell you what,
you guys there and Mr. Mahaffey's belly wick there in his county.
You got a darn fine constitutionalist as your attorney general.
And I pray that the sheriff in his county also sits up and takes notice and does not try to use the
power that the people of Virginia gave to him and use it against the people because that would put
the sheriff in direct contradiction to the United States Constitution and to the Virginia.
Constitution and would give the citizenry every right in the world to stand defiantly against him
if he tries to enforce it. And that's exactly what needs to happen. I,
for one, appreciate you Virginians up there and your defiance against Governor Ralph Naltham when
he was in office there. And I darn sure appreciate you standing up and giving a show of force.
against this unconstitutional bull fertilizer going on there now.
Keep up the good work, and you know that the people across the nation, all of us who are
constitutionally minded, we stand with you. Stand firm and keep up the good work.
Now, let's take a little jog to Massachusetts because, well,
you recall what happened recently there. convicted felon, somehow managed to get hold of an assault
rifle and went on a shooting spree and was stopped by a former Marine and a police officer.
So this is an article by Cam Edwards writing for BearingArms.com.
You should follow that publication. Great publication. Got some great writers like Mr. Cam Edwards.
And here's the article. Democrats in Massachusetts are scrambling for political cover after a
repeat violent felon managed to evade the state's restrictive gun control laws and get his hands on
a rifle this week, using it to fire dozens of rounds at motorists in Cambridge before he was
stopped by an armed citizen and a Massachusetts state trooper.
As the Gun Owners Action League reports, some Democrats are demanding new laws in response,
not to make it easier for lawful citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights,
of course, but to make violent crime even more illegal. I like the way you put that,
Mr. Edwards. Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Hunters Action League,
made this comment. He said the only law that saved lives on Memorial Drive was the Second
Amendment. An armed citizen stopped what could have been a bloodbath, but the Commonwealth's
politicians could only call for More laws. They can't help themselves because that would mean they
would have to admit their policies have been a complete failure. Well, that's probably because they
have been. Gun control laws and gun control policies do nothing to stop evil people like this
shooter. But I tell you what, a couple of armed good guys certainly did.
Back to the article. The previous crimes of the Memorial Drive terrorist should have kept him in
prison for many decades. Instead, he was back on the streets in three years.
This isn't a failure of the system. It is the system. Yeah,
in short, the judicial system in Massachusetts enabled this shooting. Back to the article.
This is the new law being called for. Section 1, Chapter 265 of the General Laws.
as appearing in the 2020 Official Edition is hereby amended by adding the following new section.
Section 15G.
Five years. Five years.
Wait, oh, it gets better. Or by imprisonment in the House of Correction for not more than two and a
half years. That's it. Five years, max.
Two and a half years, probably, for attempted murder. Okay,
this essentially has already happened. This judge let the man out, cut his sentence down so he
could be paroled. And this is the end result, as, I mean, anybody with the brain of a gnat could
have foreseen this crap coming. This guy was a violent offender, repeat offender,
and now we're shocked that he managed to get a hold of a rifle and try to do just some wholesale
murder? Back to the article. Oh, well, that ought to take care of the problem.
Never mind that the suspect in Monday's shooting has been sentenced to five to six years in prison
already for essentially the same crime back in 2020, or that it's already a criminal offense in
Massachusetts to try to murder someone regardless of what implement is used. And forget about the
fact that the prosecutor sought a 10 to 12-year sentence for the suspect in this week's attack
back in 2021 when he was charged with weight, firing more than a dozen shots at police officers.
But a judge slashed the sentence in half. Okay,
this man has already tried to murder over a dozen cops,
and he got let out in just a couple of years.
Tell me why I'm supposed to be shocked that he did what he did. Even if Democrats do pass this
nothing burger law, what's to stop a judge from sentencing future offenders to the bare minimum?
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has pointed her finger at the now-retired judge, complaining
that Tyler Brown, the shooter, should have received a much stiffer sentence five years ago,
even as she... continued to downplay the armed citizen who played a major role in stopping the more
recent rampage. Healy tells the Herald she has spoken with the state trooper and retired Marine who
took action Monday to subdue the gunman. Now, I want you to listen to her semantics here.
I just want to say I spoke to the trooper and to the former federal agent.
What? He was a Marine.
Roy, come on. She probably just made a faux pas. No, I want you to hear me out on this.
Let me finish reading her comment first. I spoke to the trooper and the federal former agent who
were on the scene. Their acts of heroism were just unbelievable. Just like what we saw last week
from Trooper Tanner on Route 1 in looking to save lives, which he did.
Again, he's not a former federal agent. Why did she call him that?
Well, the reason she falsely referred to him as a formal,
I'm sorry, federal agent is, I believe, intentional. I'll tell you why.
There is a narrative that has been propagated on all of these communist-occupied territories that
only the police are able to defend the citizenry, not even veterans.
Once veterans leave the service, they are... to their civilian life, and they cannot be trusted as
far as the state is concerned with defending the citizenry, even though they did so in uniform for
at least four years, anywhere three to four years, or maybe more. So the fact that she refers to
him as a formal federal agent does not surprise me at all. Because the false narrative is that only
the police should be armed and not ordinary citizens, not even if they're former military.
You know, in the past, these Democrat communists have gone after veterans and their right to keep
and bear arms, especially under the Obama and Biden administration. So she also wants to further
the idiotic falsehood that only the police. are able to protect the citizenry and nobody else,
period, including citizens themselves. So she couldn't dare call him an armed citizen.
No, that would wreck their narrative. And this is how the police states in this country were
created, including the one in Massachusetts is this false notion being propagated.
that only the police can protect us. You citizens cannot have guns. We can't trust you with them,
but we can trust this other class of citizens known as police officers.
Uh-huh.
Governor Healy, any other notion that communist narrative that you put forth must be squelched.
It has to be squelched.
just squished underfoot because this is the end result.
She purposely, this is not, I don't believe for a second, just a misstatement by her,
a formal federal agent. Yeah, this is.
This is the kind of stuff we're dealing with here. You understand the contempt they hold us keepers
and bearers in, right? Oh, yes, they do. And proof of that is they want to make sure we're unarmed.
They think we're beneath them and must be unarmed for their safety, not public safety,
for their safety and their safety only. That's exactly what this is all about.
Let me finish the article here. They'll demand another law that will punish an offender after the
fact, blame a retired judge for their shared soft on crime philosophy, and do everything they can
to convince the people that this defensive gun use was just a fluke instead of evidence of the
importance of our right to keep and bear arms. Amen and amen, Mr. Cam Edwards.
We'll be right back with more Shooting Straight. When we come back, we're going to have another
look at... director Robert Cicada and his chief council leader who sat down for an interview with,
let's see, a journalist named Sher Michael Singleton. And I'm going to bring out some highlights of
that interview and again, reinforce this notion that you cannot trust anyone as head of the ATF
because of the fact that they are the head of the ATF. The largest criminal organization I think
this country has probably ever seen. I should say this. Let me clarify. The largest criminal
organization that has the sanctified title of federal agency.
Don't go anywhere. We've got a lot more to go here on Shooting Straight.
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As I promised, we're going to be talking about this interview. by journalist Sher Michael Singleton
when he sat down with the new ATF director, Robert Cicada,
and chief council leader, L-E-I-D-E-R, for this wide-ranging interview,
and it's going to be generously interspersed with my commentary. Now, the whole purpose of me
battering this subject repeatedly over the last few episodes is this.
I am weary with people... and organizations in the pro Second Amendment community that look upon
this change of leadership as a plus for the Second Amendment. It absolutely is not.
As long as the ATF is alive, as long as it is in existence,
our Second Amendment rights are being infringed. They exist.
Let's get into it. ATF Director Robert Cicada and Chief Counsel Robert Leader at Two Bobs sat down
with journalist Sher Michael Singleton for a wide-ranging interview that ran on the We the Free
network and was subsequently broken down by Guns N' Gadgets host Jared Yanis.
The conversation marks one of the most candid public discussions on the agency's reform direction
since Cicada's April 29th confirmation and the simultaneous announcement of 34 new rulemaking
notices. Now, you've already heard my opinions on those notices, but I have a question for you.
How many of you out there would ever trust career criminals to reform themselves?
How many of you would ever look at somebody who's been in and out of trouble or been caught
multiple times violating the law and say, you know what? Well,
as long as they've turned over a new leaf, then we can trust them to walk among us again.
More than that, how many of you would trust a career criminal to lord it over any of your God
-given, blood-bought constitutional rights?
Therein lies the rub. This recent PR campaign that seems to be attempting to whitewash this
criminal agency and make it more palatable to gun owners and the gun industry is designed,
in my opinion, to do one thing. maintain government control over the industry and the right of the
people to keep and bear arms. That's what this is about. Now, am I saying that gun groups are
complicit? No, I'm saying I don't think they understand that the leopard cannot change his spots.
Once an infringer, always an infringer. These people have a murderous past.
They cannot be trusted. I don't trust the ATF to reform itself any more than I trust a career
criminal. to reform himself or herself back to the article for an agency that gun owners have spent
the better part of a decade viewing as an adversary well more like five decades The substance of
what Cicada and Leader said in the interview matters, and so does the fact that they set it on
record in front of cameras to an audience of gun rights advocates rather than mainstream press.
Look, I got news for you. I'd love to be as optimistic as the author of this article,
but I don't care who they set it in front of. They can't be trusted.
I've already explained to you that Mr. Cicada was at the ATF when Fast and Furious was going on and
when Mr. Brian Malinowski was murdered and when all of the FFLs were having their licenses yanked
over minor clerical errors. Guns and Gadgets host Jared Yannis breaks down the singleton.
interview with key clips and analysis. The full and edited Singleton interview is available on the
We The Free network, so keep that in mind. You can look for it. So who's running the ATF now?
Some context matters here because the interview lands differently if you know the backgrounds of
the people in it. Robert Cicada is a 21-year ATF veteran.
Well, right off the bat, that disqualifies him. I'm sorry. That is not a resume enhancer,
if you ask me. 21-year ATF veteran who rose through the NYPD ranks before joining the Bureau in
2005. He started in the Baltimore Field Division,
working on transnational organized crime, then served in Tampa, Florida, then moved into ATF
headquarters in 2013, working on what has become, I'm sorry,
working on what became the agency's frontline strategy. What was the frontline strategy?
Uh-huh, well, naturally and by consequence, the constant and incessant infringement of the right
to keep and bear arms by the enforcement of the NFA and the GCA. He was promoted to deputy director
in April 2025 and confirmed to the director's position in a 59-39 Senate vote on April 29,
2026. Only the third ATF director since the position became Senate confirmable in 2006.
He also, by his own account, in a post-confirmation Breitbart interview,
a lifelong hunter, multiple AR-15 owner, and a self-described fan of an armed citizenry whose
father immigrated from Yugoslavia and instilled the importance of armed civilians in keeping
authoritarian governments at bay. And yet, he still, without reservation,
constantly enforces the NFA and the GCA. Just because he's in the driver's seat now doesn't lessen
what he's doing. Chief Counsel Robert Leader, who appears alongside Cicada in the interview,
is the more analytically interesting figure for legal-minded gun owners. He came to ATF from
George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, where he was a constitutional scholar with
significant published work on Second Amendment doctrine. Really? Well,
Leader is no friend to the Second Amendment or to gun owners. In May 2025,
Mr. Leader... initially concluded that forced reset triggers were dangerous and should remain
classified as illegal machine guns. How could such an assumed constitutional scholar be against
forced reset triggers or even against machine guns being owned by the citizenry?
Well, Mr. Second Amendment, Mr.
Scholar who published significant works on Second Amendment doctrine,
But you're against FRTs and machine guns for citizen ownership? Thankfully,
his opinion was overruled by DOJ officials that led to a settlement that kept the force reset
triggers legal for sale and for personal use. Of course,
as long as they were not developed for pistols, which was a caveat that he initiated,
of course, he is still constitutionally ignorant and should never be viewed as friendly toward the
supreme law, the gun industry, or gun owners. He's not.
Any. A public official that tries to tell me that we the people should not own machine guns,
should not own mortars, should not own Bradley fighting vehicles, and yes, even a freaking F-35,
if we can afford it, is not a constitutional scholar. The cicada leader pairing.
Career Enforcement Officer plus Constitutional Law Academic is unusual for ATF leadership and
shapes how the interview reads. The Truth About Guns, that's a good publication to follow online,
by the way, previously covered Mr. Cicada's confirmation hearing where he pledged respect for
lawful gun honors. obviously implying that such respect was nonexistent prior thereto,
but offered relatively few specifics about what reform would actually look like.
The Singleton interview, two weeks after confirmation and after the rule package announcement,
fills in much of that detail. On the stabilizing brace rule and regulatory creep,
the most substantively important part of the interview is leaders' discussion on how ATF arrived at
recent regulatory positions and why the current administration is unwinding them.
Mr. Leader said, it's important to not only say what we're doing, but why we're doing it.
When we regulate, we're not supposed to be just creating our own law. Did you catch that stark
admission?
Uh-huh. Meaning we know they've been doing it. Okay. But we're supposed to trust you now to take
the helm as a constitutional scholar and not continue the same thing?
Well, you're automatically continuing it. by enforcing illegal laws.
He continued, those regulations are supposed to be implementing decisions that Congress has made.
We have to make sure that what we are doing is lawful. Really? How about making sure first that
you're not violating the supreme law? Oh, that's right. If you did that,
you wouldn't have that comfy federal job that pays you 200 grand annually, huh? Not to mention the
golden parachute pension paid for by the people whose rights it's your job to violate.
You're welcome. That framing matters because it diagnoses the underlying problem with ATF
rulemaking under prior administrations. Well, what makes you think they're not going to go right
back to doing that under a Democrat president? or some other weak-kneed Republican administration,
huh? The agency was making policy through regulation rather than implementing policy from statute.
No kidding. Leader continued, The agency has flip-flopped positions on a number of issues
throughout the years, but they still want to be trusted. And you still want us to trust them?
You can't trust somebody who speaks with a forked tongue.
And from the industry's perspective and the consumer's perspective,
you need a stable regulatory framework. Well, we've already got one,
Mr. Leader. It's called the Constitution. It's called the Supreme Law. It is a regulatory
framework, sir, which forbids your existence as an agency.
When you're flipping without explanation, that doesn't let people have the stability that they
need. It's almost like they're talking about us like we're toddlers. The stability they need to
make decisions either in their business or on the consumer side. The stabilizing brace rule is the
clearest example. The Biden-era ATF reclassified pistols equipped with stabilizing braces.
Excuse me. as short-barreled rifles subject to the national firearms registration requirements,
a position that turned an estimated several million previously lawful firearms into NFA contraband
overnight. The rule was vacated by federal courts. ATF continued enforcement despite
The new rulemaking package includes a proposed repeal of the brace rule altogether.
In other words, just totally do away with the entire thing. Well, how about we just go even further
and just repeal every stinking law that basically... justifies quote-unquote the ATF's existence.
I think that would be much better. You would really nip all this crap in the bud. That would be the
best and fastest way to do this. Cicada did not soft pedal the impact of the prior approach.
He acknowledged in an interview that during his time as a field agent, he said,
There were some policies in particular as it related to short barrel rifles that we didn't know
exactly where we stood either at times. Okay,
but you still enforced it, didn't you?
Meaning agents in the field were uncertain how to apply rules ATF leadership had created.
Okay, how about first of all, you start following the supreme rules. He also said when we don't
know and the public doesn't know, then that's something that overtly is telling you there's a major
gap that needs to be filled. Okay, the best way to fill that is with constitutional propriety.
Let's start there. On the Second Amendment, I'm sorry, on the anti-Second Amendment period of the
agency's history, okay. Hate to break it to you, the entire existence of the agency has been one
massive anti-Second Amendment period. Leader's framing of the recent past,
though it's been more than the recent past, was unusually direct for a senior federal official.
He said, It was certainly the case that there were some people, including some people in some high
-level positions, who held fairly strong anti-Second Amendment views,
and that would come out in the policies. No kidding. Really? Wow,
we didn't notice. When I got here in 2025, he said, I had both the blessing and the curse of being
an outsider. I had a list of things that didn't make sense to me. Well, none of the NFA or GCA make
any sense either. I came in and started saying, okay, this is how we're operating.
Why are we operating this way? Can we change it? And I started almost immediately.
Well, that's a good start, sir, but it needs to go further. He said,
that's a chief counsel describing his own agency's recent leadership as holding anti-Second
Amendment views on the record. Not a characterization gun rights advocates make about ATF from the
outside, but one being made from inside ATF itself. I'm sorry,
that doesn't engender trust from me in this agency. So,
where does this reform package stand? The 34 rule changes announced at Cicada's April 29th swearing
-in and discussed at length in the interview fall into five categories.
Repeal, modernize, reduce, reduce burden, clarify,
and align. Okay, I like that. Yeah, we can repeal the NFA and GCA.
We can modernize things by doing away with the ATF. We can reduce the regulatory burden by doing
away with the ATF. We can clarify. the supreme law by doing away with the atf and align the atf
with the supreme law by abolishing it outright yeah disband it immediately that would be the best
way to repeal modernize reduce burden clarify and align The package represents what Acting Attorney
General Todd Blanche described as more regulatory volume than ATF issued in the previous 15 years
combined. Well, you know, there should be no regulatory volume at all because the agency has no
constitutional right to exist. Among the headline items, the proposed brace rule repeal.
Revisions to the engaged in the business rule that the Biden administration used to expand the
universe of regulated private sellers. Updated yet, that cost Brian Malinowski his life.
updated machine gun definitions responding to the Cargill decision on bump stocks,
the Form 4473 revision, reducing the form from seven pages to four,
there should be no damn forms in the first place, and the non-over-the-counter rule allowing
FFLs to ship firearms directly to verified buyers after background check completion.
The cautious, optimistic question. The interview is doing something specific in the gun rights
media ecosystem, and it's worth being honest about it. Cicada and Leader are presenting the new ATF
leadership to an audience that has spent years being adversarial towards the agency.
Excuse me, our adversarial position. was engendered by their adversarial position towards the
Constitution and the free exercise of our God-given blood-purchased rights.
They're not the freaking victim here. You don't get to say, well, you guys have been treating them
adversarially for quite some time now. Yeah, and for dadgum good reason.
They have been adversaries. We have a right to treat our adversaries like, wait for it,
adversaries. I mean, why is this not sinking in?
Yanis, the Guns and Gadgets host, captured the tension in his breakdown.
He said, I'm not saying that the ATF has now earned my trust, nor should they have your trust
blindly. Good, because they never will have it at all. They have to earn that. The only way to earn
it is disband. They all stand up and say, we cannot in good conscience ever be ATF agents again.
We hope we can find gainful employment in some other federal agency. But in the meantime,
we're turning in our badges and our guns, and we are ceasing and desisting the enforcement of the
Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act. That's the only way they would ever earn my trust.
He said there's a lot of things that they would have to undo even to get into that realm. Amen, Mr.
Yanis. But this might be the most positive Second Amendment step the ATF has ever taken.
in its entire history.
The Truth About Guns has been skeptical of ATF reform claims, amen, since the agency began making
them a year ago, and that skepticism is healthy. Three considerations worth keeping in mind.
First, regulations announced this spring are not the same as regulations finalized.
I've been wanting to say that for the last few episodes and keep forgetting. The 34 notices include
both final rules and proposed rules in active comment periods.
Some will be finalized. Some may be modified during the comment process. Some may face legal
challenges from gun control advocacy organizations. And yes, they will. Second,
ATF's institutional posture can change with the administration. And there it is right there.
Yes, they're doing... good things, you know,
quasi good things because of the present administration. But I hate to break it to you.
The present administration is not exactly wholeheartedly Second Amendment. They've made some nice
overtures in our direction, but it got a long way to go. So Cicada and Leader have made clear in
the interview that they're aware of this. The brace rule is a textbook example of how dramatic.
dramatically agency interpretations can shift between administrations.
Whatever protections this reform package establishes are durable only in so far as future
administrations and future Congresses choose to maintain them,
which is why they should not exist at all. They cannot be trusted to do anything but flip-flop.
That's the only thing you could trust. and declare consistent about the ATF is their inconsistency,
if nothing else. Third, as Representative Maxwell Frost pressed Cicada in a post-confirmation
House hearing, Cicada's own role in pre-2025 ATF rulemaking is a contested question.
Good. Frost asserted Cicada worked on Biden-era rules. Well,
Cicada denied that. Well, I don't see how you could deny it, sir. You were part of the ATF. The
dispute suggests the current reform agenda has political opponents who will press on the
consistency of Cicada's positions. The bottom line, ATF spent decades operating largely opaquely,
communicating with the firearm industry primarily through enforcement actions and the occasional
contested rule, a 90-minute on-record interview with gun rights media in which the director and
chief counsel openly discuss what went wrong and what they're trying to fix is not how federal
agencies typically engage with their critics. Well, okay, I'll grant you that. Nor is it enough to
engender trust. Yeah. I'm sorry, that's the bottom line for me.
This is not enough to engender trust in an agency that has proven Since it was spawned in 1972,
they cannot be trusted in any way, shape, or form to protect and uphold and defend the supreme law
and not violently violate it without any expectation of consequences because that's exactly what
they've been doing. It says whether the engagement is sustained.
whether the rule changes survive the comment process intact, and whether courts uphold the legal
theory under the ATF is now operating are all open questions.
But the questions are at least being asked in public by the agency itself in a conversation gun
owners can watch and judge for themselves. Well... We are watching and we are judging for ourselves
and we have nothing to go on other than past behavior, which is the best indicator of future
behavior. And that's the judgment bar that I'm going to hold them under.
They cannot prove themselves to me that they are worthy of trust simply by virtue of their
existence and what their mission is. I cannot. and will not ever trust the ATF,
I don't care how many supposed constitutional scholars are at their helm,
or how many good guys like Robert Cicada are steering the agency now.
Sorry, my trust has been jaded since 1972 with everything they have done and all the people they
have murdered in their wake. Funny, nothing in that interview addressed Oh,
what should I say? Punishment for agents who have committed gross crimes.
No investigation into Jeffrey Bodell fabricating evidence against Patrick Adamiak.
No, not the murder of Brian Malinowski. No, none of that. Oh, the willful destruction of many
businesses and families by ripping their licenses off the wall over a T not being crossed or an I
not being dotted. So sorry, I'm a little bit jaundiced in the trust area towards this ungodly
agency. And that's just the bottom line. Hey, catch the next episode.
Dale from Alabama, you brought up the topic. I'm going to cover it in the next episode. And what
we're going to be talking about, a little sneak preview, can a truck driver carry a gun?
That's a great topic, and we're going to be discussing it in the next episode. Until then, stay in
contact with your reps, stay armed, stay trained, stay stocked up on beans,
bullets, and bandages, and never forget, that's right, you know what I'm going to say, never
forget, Incoming rounds always have the right of way. Royce out.