Now The Obama Administration Is After Gunsmiths?

Frank Miniter ,  

Contributor

I expose the excesses of the bureaucracy.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

The gunsmith here is fixing a sight on a rifle. The Obama administration is now saying that gunsmiths are “manufacturers” who must register with the State Department and pay a $2,250 annual fee. (ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/Getty Images)

My gunsmith has a lathe, a drill press, even a barrel reamer. He uses them to repair guns. To him, they are like a car mechanic’s welding equipment, drill and cutter tools. He never thought drilling out a broken-off screw or grinding down a gun part to make a rifle’s action work smoother would define him as a “manufacturer.” But now, according to the federal government, he is a manufacturer and is required to pay a $2,250 annual fee as mandated by the U.S. State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) regulations. This is what the Obama administration is now saying in a rule change.
Manta lists 15,615 gunsmiths in American today. Many of these are small shops—many of them are even side businesses for people who began tinkering with guns and then went to a gunsmith school. Requiring these people to pay $2,250 every year will drive many of them out of business or underground. Perhaps that is the reason for the rule change from the Obama administration. If there is another reason, they aren’t making it public.
This “guidance” for federal regulators from the U.S. Department of State was issued on July 22.
A statement from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for firearms manufacturers, says this “‘guidance’ has created considerable and understandable confusion and concern among gunsmiths and gun owners.”
The text of the Arms Export Control Act, which these regulations stem from, uses the term “manufacture” as the dictionary defines it, not in the expansive way the government is now attempting to use it. According to the Obama administration’s new definition of what constitutes a manufacturer, everything from bicycle repair shops to carpenters would be deemed “manufacturers” and therefore be subject to regulations and fees that companies that make products and import and/or export goods are subject to. But those other businesses are not being defined as manufacturers. So, as gunsmiths are being singled out, this is obviously more gun-control politics from the Obama administration.
This $2,250 fee is designed to fund the DDTC’s export licensing system. How are gunsmiths using or burdening this system? The NSSF says, “This is even more outrageous when one considers that DDTC is sitting on at least $140 million dollars of previously paid registration fees collected over many years from exporters from many industries including ours.”
The NSSF says they are lobbying Congress to step in and fix this problem with legislation. They also say, “The Obama Administration has refused to publish and implement the regulatory changes necessary to transfer for export licensing of commercial and sporting firearms and ammunition products to the Department of Commerce from the Department of State.”
Imagine a gunsmith getting up from his bench, where he was busy tweaking a gun’s stock for a customer, to answer a call from the State Department demanding he pay $2,250 every year or face the legal consequences, and you see why this is outrageous.
As there is no known reason for burdening gunsmiths with this large annual fee, and because doing so requires a strange and expansive redefinition of the word “manufacture,” it seems clear this is just more gun-control politics from the Obama administration.