The senators, Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley among them, are upset
that the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC)
is trying to impose new fees and regulations on gun or ammunition
related businesses in a back-handed manner that tries to bypass or at
least limit the Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms.
One such example is new guidelines from the DDTC that would make some
gunsmiths register as firearms "manufacturers" on the grounds that they
do work such as changing the sights on a pistol. This means that they
would have to pay a fee of $2,250.
The
National Rifle Association notes that this hefty fee tries to stymie legal behavior and also threatens to put small commercial gunsmiths out of business.
The senators are especially upset because the DDTC is issuing these
directives under the auspices of the International Traffic in Arms
Regulations (ITAR), even though the Obama administration promised a
reform that would remove firearms and ammunition from DDTC's purview and
transfer it to the more business-friendly jurisdiction of the Commerce
Department, Breitbart reported.
The purpose of the reform was to strengthen controls on the most
sophisticated defense technologies, while reducing unnecessary
regulations on less sensitive items, such as firearms and ammunition.
The letter from the senators demands a specific date by which the
reform enabling the transfer of businesses dealing in firearms and
ammunition to the Commerce Department would be completed and said that
"the last thing [the affected small businesses] need is an edict from
the federal government imposing crippling fees and requirements which
are wholly unnecessary and nonsensical."
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