Posted on 03/16/2014 11:29:03 PM PDT by Nachum
Southern California gun parts and accessory dealer Ares Armor continues to inform customers and supporters as to the status of its operations following yesterday’s raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Ares Chief Operations Officer Jeremy Tuma posted an update Saturday evening to his Instagram account where he first posted the news yesterday afternoon that “ATF is currently executing search warrants on all of our locations.”
“We will be burning the midnight oil to assure we are fully operational by morning and that business goes on as uninterrupted as possible,” Tuma stated in last night’s message.
Per Dave Workman, who conducted a telephone interview last night with Ares CEO Dimitrios Karras for The Gun Mag, “federal agents ‘took almost 6,000 lowers’ [and] no arrests of any Ares Armor employees were made.” Supplementing that is a Facebook alert from the CalGuns Foundation advising “We have confirmed that the ATF has searched multiple properties in the Ares Armor/EP Lowers matter and have seized customer lists,” and reminding people approached by law enforcement to “Exercise your right to remain silent; Never consent to a search; Demand an attorney; [and] Contact The Calguns Foundation’s Help Hotline.”
What is unclear is what those “lists” consist of if the lowers were not recorded as firearms. No doubt they include credit/debit purchases, and may also include generic customer lists/mailing lists, etc. With computers seized, ATF has it all.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Fkrs
Took the word from my mouth.
And no arrests in the atf supplying guns to the drug cartels.
This is why I have never..and will never buy from anyone other than a trusted private seller...
Please pardon my ignorance, what is a “lower”?
Lower receiver is the part of an AR-15/M-16 that the ATF has determined to be “the” firearm. It is the part that is serialized, and is the part that requires a background check to obtain (where that is required). It’s the part that has the trigger mechanism and takes the magazine.
For example, you can buy every other part for an AR-15 through an online source and have it shipped directly to your house without any sort of paperwork, background check or having to go through an FFL - none of the other parts are considered to be a firearm. Not so with a completed lower receiver.
The interesting thing is that somewhere between a hunk of metal and that fully finished lower receiver, the hunk “becomes” a firearm.
The ATF has determined that up to 80% completed, the product is still a hunk of metal and can be transferred with no restrictions. After 80%, it becomes a firearm and subject to the inherent restrictions.
So there are a whole bunch of companies building 80% completed lower receivers. Consumers can complete the machining transforming it into a firearm. As long as the consumer never sells or transfers it, he does not need to serialize it, nor does that action need to be reported.
The finish machining is relatively easy - some milling and drilling. It can be accomplished with a drill press, although some jigs are helpful and a milling machine makes it easier.
As I understand it, the issue with Ares is they were making 80% lowers where the area to be machined out was a different color (and they used a polymer instead of metal). Apparently, ATF insisted that they were making a 100% receiver and then filling in the machining voids with the colored material, which the ATF said does not qualify it as an 80% lower (you can’t go back to 80% once it’s 100% completed).
Ares has stated that the ATF is wrong (my guess is they mold the polymer for the receiver around a colored core, meaning the assembly is not completed first and then backfilled).
Definition: Simply put, the receiver holds the mechanical parts of a gun. These parts include the trigger housing and bolt carrier group. Most firearms have a single receiver although a few--most notably the AR-15 and the AR-10--have both a lower and an upper receiver. Website
The lowers are manufactured by EP Armory, and they were raided last week. Ares Armor is a retailer.
And here's a picture of a clear EP Armory lower, and as you can see the plug has several voids in it that make impossible to insert or remove without machining. There are several 'bars' of material in the trigger housing pocket that go all the way from one side to the other.
Here is an EP Armory lower that has been partially machined:
I guess the ATF will soon be changing its name abbreviation to ASS (American SS).I once trusted them but after all the blunders and illegal operations they have carried out under Obama, no more.
This is a personal tragedy because my whole working family is involved in the law/legal matters and law enforcement, including myself. You wouldn’t believe the crap that is posing as law enforcement policies on both the federal and local/state levels.
When I worked with the FBI many years ago, Hoover wouldn’t have tolerated these “cowboy” operations no matter who the AG was.
My how times have changed, for the worse.
Obama promised change, and he has kept his word in that area if nowhere else. It's all change for the worse (worst?), but at least the druggie warned us.
Will the judge find the ATF in contempt for violating his restraining order?
P4L
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. I understand now.
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