There are three grave threats to firearm freedoms: giant unaccountable government agencies, ignorant and emotionally-driven laws, and bad enforcement policies. Sometimes the stars align and you see perfect examples of all three pop up in a single weekend.
Today we will look at the Department of Justice's brand new National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center (NERPORC for short), the even more hilariously named Destroy Zombie Guns Act, and the tragic ATF raid on the home of Bryan Malinowski.
There are three grave threats to firearm freedoms: giant unaccountable government agencies, ignorant and emotionally-driven laws, and bad enforcement policies. Sometimes the stars align and you see perfect examples of all three pop up in a single weekend.
Today we will look at the Department of Justice's brand new National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center (NERPORC for short), the even more hilariously named Destroy Zombie Guns Act, and the tragic ATF raid on the home of Bryan Malinowski.
You want to know three terrible trends in the gun control space? Any one of these things would be bad on its own, but combined they are especially bad. Welcome back to another T-Rex Talk. Today we're going to discuss some things that have been happening in the world of gun control Not since the last time we talked about gun control, but all pretty much in the last week and I specifically want to highlight three very specific things which are bad on their own, but when their powers combine they become much, much worse. They're far more deadly than just the sum of their individual parts Sort of a perfect storm of things.
Isaac:So the first thing I want to talk about is incredibly dangerous to all rights, but gun rights in particular. Human rights, specifically when you get massive bureaucratic infrastructure with no oversight and that seems pretty obvious, but I have a pretty good example of that, and that is this Saturday, at a time when nobody was paying attention, the government announced a National Extreme Risk Protection Resource Center. Now, if you'll recall, this is a huge mouthful to say, but if you'll recall, the extreme risk protection orders are basically the new hard-to-say version of red flag laws. This is a way to disarm people who represent some kind of extreme risk and the protection order, which sounds good, is always actually some kind of disarmament order. So what exactly is the National Extreme Risk Protection Resource Center? It is a federal institution which has been started by the Department of Justice and its goal is to help states, local authorities inside of specific states to do red flag stuff and, to some extent, to get the other states that don't have red flags on board. So we're going to have to wait and see exactly what this looks like, but in general it is, you know, obviously not good. I think we should start with with an acronym, because I'm not going to keep saying the whole name, but it's NERPORC. Nerporc is the actual acronym for the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center. It's part of. It's almost like nobody looked that thing up before they started it. It's almost as if this thing were created in a specific rush. It it's almost as if this thing were created in a specific rush, but the press release says that they're going to help train law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service and social service providers, community organizations and behavioral health professionals how to do ERPOs or, you know, red flag stuff. This is what the employees of NERPORC will be doing, and we just need to make this acronym pronounced exactly the way that I am pronouncing it. We need to make this the main takeaway here.
Isaac:Now, the timing of this announcement is a little bit interesting, because the legislature just voted on a gigantic omnibus bill, the gigantic omnibus bill that they got just hours before they were supposed to vote on it. These huge bills usually have just unbelievable amount of spending. In this one, this one, was, I think, $1.2 trillion worth of spending, and it's in a bill that is basically unreadable and I don't mean unreadable in general, which it definitely is, but certainly unreadable in the space of time that you would have to review it before voting on it. It's like 1,100 pages long, which is normal for these kind of omnibus bills, so obviously it didn't get fully reviewed before it got voted on and, of course, it got passed. It's only a few hours later that the NERPORC was announced, and so some people have assumed that it was funded by the omnibus bill and set up ahead of time, but that's not actually entirely true. It will not surprise me in the slightest if the Department of Justice gets a whole bunch of money in the omnibus bill to do stuff like NIRPORC, perhaps expand NIRPORC and NIRPORC's agenda, but it also is funded by some things that were passed ahead of time.
Isaac:We've talked a few times on the podcast about the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was passed a couple of years ago by Congress, and one of the things that it does is provide financial incentives for states to implement red flag laws, or ERPOs. This is basically based on the recognition that the federal government has no business instituting red flag laws itself. It's something that has to be done at the state level, so it will bribe states to do the thing. But now there's a bunch of money set aside to start NERPORC, or perhaps THE NERPORC it's a pretty new acronym, we should figure out how we want to say it but apparently four million dollars came out of that bipartisan Safer Communities Act to pay for NERPORC. But it's also getting a bunch of money from Bloomberg Mike Bloomberg Not from him directly, of course, but one of his many trusts that has to do with health. So even though this thing has been created by the Department of Justice and has been funded by money that was technically voted on and approved by Congress, it's also getting funding from other places and there isn't going to be very good accountability. Will the agents at Nair Pork be taking their marching orders from Congress, from the Department of Justice or from various folks at Mike Bloomberg's Health Foundation? That kind of remains to be seen. Fortunately, most of those people do have the same agenda, so there shouldn't be too much contention as they deal with this stuff. So that's the first thing Gigantic, no accountability, no oversight, bureaucratic infrastructure specifically to spy on people or at least collect data about them and use that data to better inform and train local law enforcement to take away people's rights more effectively.
Isaac:But the second thing that I want to talk about is when there are very poorly informed, very ignorant and very emotional calls for disarmament or restricting of rights or destruction of firearms, and this is also pretty common. But again, this past week we had a conversation about this and it has an even funnier name than NERPORC, and it has an even funnier name than NERPORC Four US Congress members have announced a piece of legislation that is called the Destroy Zombie Guns Act, which is an incredibly stupid name. Now, initially I was actually kind of on board because you remember that trend several years ago when bright green zombie guns were fairly popular. For about a minute. Those things are terribly ugly and usually pretty dumb, but that's not what they're talking about at all. Let's see who is involved in promoting this bill. It is Congressman Gabe Amo from Rhode Island, maxwell Frost from Florida, jill Takuda from Hawaii and, of course, adam Schiff from California All Democrats, no surprise.
Isaac:And here is what they are talking about. They're talking about the zombie gun loophole. Now, we've talked a lot about ghost guns in the past, and that is why they have picked zombie guns as their next target. They've talked quite a bit about the gun show loophole, so now they're talking about a zombie gun loophole. It actually took me a bit about the gun show loophole, so now they're talking about a zombie gun loophole. It actually took me a while to figure out what they were talking about, because it makes so little sense.
Isaac:But here's the deal. As you know, there are these various gun buyback programs and there are these various ways in which guns get seized by police officers, and in different states or rather I should say in different jurisdictions those guns get handled in different ways. Sometimes they get auctioned off, and I have purchased police gun auctions on a number of occasions. There's also a situation in which the gun needs to be destroyed, and in a lot of jurisdictions, the way that this happens is it is the firearm that needs to be destroyed and, as you know, the ATF has determined that the firearm is the serialized lower receiver. It's not the gun in its entirety. The springs, the barrel and various other pieces do not have to be destroyed. In order for the firearm to be destroyed, you only need to kill its soul, which is, you know, the serialized lower receiver.
Isaac:These four congresspeople have discovered recently that the entire gun is not being destroyed, only the part of the gun that is legally the firearm. This is what they are calling the zombie gun loophole the fact that there are various jurisdictions which are sending guns away to be destroyed and the part that is legally the gun is being completely destroyed, and then various springs and barrels and lower parts kits are getting sold on the market because they are perfectly good firearm parts that cost money to make and they're able to be resold and be reused by people, which is, you know, I think, a perfect example of ecological responsibility. However, these four congresspeople disagree. They believe that when the part of the firearm that is legally a firearm is destroyed, and then the parts of the firearm that are not a firearm. The grips, the forend, the springs, the barrel, stuff like that gets purchased by somebody and assembled onto a different firearm. What has now been created is a zombie gun, which is somehow more dangerous and more deadly, and also the completely wrong word. If you're making guns out of different parts of guns, this is clearly a Frankenstein gun and not a zombie gun. So what we have here is a piece of legislation that not only fails to understand how firearms work from a legal perspective and how firearm violence is conducted from a practical perspective, but it also fails to understand how basic movie monster magic works. And now I'm curious to find out what sort of magical new gun types we'll see in the future.
Isaac:Ghost guns worked pretty well as like a memorable slur to talk about unserialized firearms, even though it certainly doesn't make them any more dangerous. Zombie guns is stupid in pretty much every possible way that you could slice it, but there's a ton of other possibilities. What about Jekyll and Hyde guns? I would say that shotguns are a perfect example of this, because you could have a pump shotgun that looks like something that your grandfather would use to hunt ducks, with its friendly wooden furniture, and this could transform into a deadly Hyde shotgun with tactical plastic foregrips and a red dot sight and a bandolier with extra slugs. Yes, that's pretty good.
Isaac:What about vampire guns? What about werewolf guns? What about Abbott and Costello? Meet the mummy guns. Actually, now that I say that one, that one kind of makes sense. Mummy guns are guns that preppers have buried underground in hopes of a future civil war scenario, far more deadly than regular firearms that have not been buried underground, preserved in cosmoline and wrapped in protective bandages. So, all in all, this is a hilarious and perfect example of the second thing that I'm talking about, this emotional manipulation and ignorance. Zombie guns are the perfect combination of these two things Firearm legislation, which doesn't really take into consideration any of the existing firearm legislation, the legal status, the definitions, any of the stuff that has to do with what it is talking about. But it has a great big emotional pull. And you pick a monster from the Universal Studios catalog of monsters. This sounds scary, to make people even more worried about zombie guns. Or, you know, swamp Thing guns. Perhaps the general public will be very worried about Francis Ford Coppola's, bram Stoker's Dracula guns and take some kind of action in that case. But the third thing that I want to talk about is terrible procedures for law enforcement. This is the third of our unholy trinity and again it was perfectly demonstrated this past week by the BATFE. The Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco and Firearms shot a man in his own home while they were conducting a raid. The story is that he tried to defend himself against the people that were breaking into his house, fired upon the agents and they returned fire, killing him. There's actually been a fair amount of information that has come out about this case, including the search warrant that led to the raid on his home, and a lot of information has come out surrounding this case. There's still lots of question marks, obviously, but there are several things that we know for sure. The guy who was killed is Brian Malinowski and he is an executive that works at the Little Rock Airport. So here's a guy who works. By the way, little Rock Airport is now named the Bill and Hillary National Airport, so On its face it's kind of an interesting story. An executive at Bill and Hillary's airport has been killed by the BATF for allegedly smuggling guns Just a fascinating combination of words in that headline. That was basically inconceivable back in the 90s, but the search warrant alleges that he has purchased over the last few years 150 firearms, most of which through private purchases, and that is, to be fair, a decent number of guns. It's about one a week, which is kind of impressive, but it's not in and of itself wrong. In fact, it's not wrong to buy guns from a private sale at all. Straw sales, which the ATF is really really opposed to, is something that isn't defined. There's no actual definition of how many guns you would have to purchase privately and or sell privately before it counts as a straw sale, or how long the firearm would have to be in your possession before you sell it to another person before it becomes a straw sale. But nevertheless, this was the case that they were making. The case was that he was buying too many firearms and he was selling them to other people privately through that previously mentioned gun show loophole, which, of course, is no loophole at all. If you are allowed to buy and sell guns privately, then you should be allowed to buy and sell guns privately even on your local county fairgrounds when a gun show is happening. So anyway, they had apparently gathered a huge amount of data on this gentleman. They had tailed him, they had put a tracker on his vehicle. They had sent people to follow him around gun shows and get hidden camera footage of him, and after all of this they did not have evidence to convict him of any crimes. Therefore, they requested the search warrant so that they could break into his house, and they did this, not while he was away at his job at the airport, but when he was guaranteed to be there in his home with all of the guns that they knew that he possessed. And it went south. As all kinds of raids sometimes do, particularly ATF raids, they seem to have worse luck than most people in these particular type of operations. The ATF's track record raises a lot of questions, but this particular operation, I think, raises even more. If they had spent so long gathering so much evidence, why could they just not bring this guy in for questioning? And if they didn't want to get involved in a gunfight with him, why didn't they pick him up or talk to him while he was at his job at an airport? Remember, this is Arkansas's biggest airport and he's a fairly high executive, so it's pretty easy for them to find his schedule and then go in and talk to him in a place where he is, you know, guaranteed to be disarmed and they have the backup of all the other law enforcement agencies that are working there at the airport, including, you know, the TSA, which is part of the DHS, which is part of the DOJ, which means, you know, they could theoretically get some help from them. Or if they had a search warrant that allowed them to break into the house without knocking, which apparently they did, they could certainly do that while he was not at home If they were confident that he had enough evidence in his home to convict him. That certainly would have worked too. So we have a really tragic outcome from a really bad bit of policy, a bad bit of policy that is now building on top of years and years of worse legislation and really really emotional and ignorant language about how stuff works. Brian Malinowski, if he was guilty of any crime, is guilty of what is essentially a paperwork crime, not actually a violent crime or threatening to commit a violent crime. But raiding his house was a pretty violent act, and if he believed that he was defending himself against unannounced home invaders, then he was only acting in self-defense. The way that this policy was executed has incredibly damaging consequences in the best case and far, far worse ones in the worst case. So the question that needs to be asked will the ATF have to deal with any consequences from this particular raid? Are they going to re-evaluate their procedures for dealing with these sorts of minimal paperwork-related potential crimes? The case is getting a fair amount of attention, but is any of that attention going to turn into actual accountability? And the answer is I doubt it. It kind of goes back to the three things that we are talking about in this episode, the three things which are bad on their own but, when combined, create a perfect storm of bureaucratic, tyrannical overreach. First these large bureaucratic agencies or departments which take their marching orders from incredibly ignorant and emotionally driven legislation or sometimes legislators, and then they base their training on this really terrible material, creating terrible procedures for law enforcement to use, and it turns into a vicious circular cycle. I'm already seeing journalists commenting on what happened in Arkansas and taking the exact wrong conclusion, instead of recognizing that the ATF took an alleged criminal, someone who is has not been convicted of any crime and apparently they haven't even been able to gather, even after months of examinations and tailing, and trackers and hidden cameras they haven't been able to gather, even after months of examinations and tailing and trackers and hidden cameras, they haven't been able to gather enough evidence to prosecute, only enough evidence to get a search warrant. They're looking at the situation in which this gentleman has been gunned down in his own home and the takeaway is that firearm crime is such a big deal that we actually need more institutions creating procedure around it and more enforcement of it. Well, now that we have a National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center, or NRPOC, operating at the federal level, there just needs to be more effort for those states to preserve freedom at the state level, those states that we've talked about before, which are desiring to preserve the human rights and firearm freedoms of their own citizens. They'll just need to do a little bit more to protect them. There's already several states that refuse to assist the ATF and refuse to assist federal law enforcement agencies prosecuting crimes that are not actually crimes in those state jurisdictions. I'll give you an example In Tennessee, it is not illegal to own a short barreled rifle, which means that Tennessee law enforcement will in no ways assist the federal government in prosecuting you for owning one, but they also won't stop the federal government for doing that, because the 1934 National Firearms Act says that you can't, you can't have one. But as these national law enforcement entities get bigger and do more and take over more and more of what their Tennessee or other state citizens are allowed to do, tennessee or other states are going to have to put up a little bit more of a defense on behalf of their citizens. They're going to have to go a bit beyond merely refusing to assist. That means that attorney generals in specific states are going to need to be ready to help their citizens file lawsuits against the federal government in certain cases, cases like the one that just unfolded in Arkansas, and cases that are surely going to result from NorPork NairPork in the future.