"Tools": ATF, having trouble keeping track of their cartel straw buyers, insists that FFLs who tried voluntarily to help them, now MUST help them.

Tool, the January 13, 2005 Urban Word of the Day:

One who lacks the mental capacity to know he is being used. A fool. A cretin. Characterized by low intelligence and/or self esteem.

That tool dosen't even know she's just using him. -- Urban Dictionary.

Mike Lillis, writing at The Hill: "DOJ gives new tools to ATF on guns."

The Obama administration on Monday granted new powers to federal regulators fighting gun traffickers on the violence-plagued Mexican border.

Issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the new rules require border-state gun dealers to report bulk purchases of assault weapons made by individual buyers over short spans of time — a tool requested in December by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Here's the announcement.

"Mendacious Mike" Bloomberg is happy.

The NRA, uncharacteristically energetic, tells the Houston Chronicle they'll sue.

Many local gun dealers are adamantly opposed to the new rule. The National Rifle Association vowed to file a lawsuit to stop it.

Chief NRA lobbyist Chris W. Cox said the regulation is illegal, and that his organization would go to court as soon as the first firearms dealers receive written instructions from the ATF.

"This is just another attempt by the president and this administration to pursue their gun-control agenda," Cox told the Houston Chronicle. "They do not have the authority by law to do this and therefore it is illegal."

Ironic, ain't it? It is as if the ATF is admitting that it was incompetent (deliberately or otherwise) in the Gunwalker Scandal and was having trouble keeping track of their cartel straw buyers so now they insist that the FFLs who previously tried voluntarily to help them, now must help them.

Of course this is another ratchet on the attempt at back-door arms registration:

A local gun dealer said the rule would not stop cartels, but makes his job more time-consuming and hassles law-abiding customers.

"I do not think it helps nabbing anyone at all," said Jim Pruett, owner of Jim Pruett's Guns and Ammo.

Additionally, Pruett said he is concerned the requirement amounts to a back-door way for the government to compile a list of who has rifles and where they live.

"I think we all object to the government knowing we have a particular gun," he said. "It is something to be feared that the government knows what weapons you own. That is not part of the Constitution."

The ATF said the names of gun purchasers will be kept for two years, provided they are not drawn into a weapons investigation. An ATF official said having the list allows investigators to quickly figure out who is making multiple purchases of weapons prized by cartels and determine if they need further scrutiny.

"Not only will it make it more difficult for these traffickers to acquire firearms, it will also make it easier for ATF and law enforcement to identify the traffickers," the official said.

If, that is, they're not already paid government informants.

"Tools" indeed.

If the NRA or SAF gets a stay on the implementation of this excrement, which I am told is in the works, then so much the better. I am at a bit of a loss to know how to fight this by civil disobedience as indirect as it is and given the double-bind FFLs are in. Except, of course, by shoving the Gunwalker Scandal right down the Obama administration's throat and gagging their whole anti-firearm agenda to bureaucratic death.

For those of you who are fans of Ender's Game, "the enemy's gate is down." (And those of you who aren't, you need to be.) We defeat the little stuff by winning at the one essential thing. Kill the hive queens and all the buggers die.

This is designed to distract from Gunwalker. So, we don't allow ourselves to get distracted and instead go straight for the enemy's gate.