Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) announced this week that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will testify on Feb. 2 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about his role in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ now-infamous “Operation Fast and Furious.”

Issa, who is chairman of the House committee, and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have led an ongoing investigation into the role of Holder and the Department of Justice in the operation.

Rumor Alert: Veterans’ Health and “Sporting Purposes” Among the thousands of questions NRA-ILA answers every month by email, phone and letter are scores that begin “This guy told me he heard …” Unfortunately, all too often this is the telltale sign of one of the rampant rumors that circulate around campfires or gun store counters, and especially on the Internet. Three of the most recent top rumors involve veterans’ gun rights, the status of the “sporting purposes” test for firearms importation, and new restrictions on gun shows.

Record NICS Checks in 2011: In January, the FBI reported that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) performed a record number of background checks in 2011. Over 99 percent of NICS checks are firearm-related.

Obama to Congress: I’ll Decide What’s Constitutional: This week, NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox wrote a comprehensive op-ed for the Daily Caller regarding President Obama abusing executive privilege and seeking new ways to vilify gun owners and further his anti-gun agenda.

To read the piece, please click here.

Get Involved In This Year’s Elections: NRA, along with America’s gun owners and Second Amendment supporters, have long been anticipating the 2012 elections—discussing, planning, preparing to ensure that our nation heads in the right direction of protecting freedom and our Second Amendment rights. Now is the time to put those plans into action, and with the help of the NRA-ILA Grassroots Division, we are confident in victory for 2012!

GRASSROOTS NEWS MINUTE VIDEO: To view this week’s “Grassroots News Minute” video, please click here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIYkRmi2Tj ESTATE ROUNDUP (Please note the only items listed below are those that have had recent action. For other updates on state legislation, please go to the state legislation section at www.NRAILA.org, and check each week’s issue of the Grassroots Alert.)

For additional information, please click on the links provided.

NEVADA: Sheriffs’ and Chiefs’ Association Hosting Fourth Annual CCW Forum
The Nevada Sheriffs’ and Chiefs’ Association will be hosting its annual Concealed Carry Weapons forum in Las Vegas on Tuesday, January 17 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in the Grant Sawyer Government Building (room 4401) located on 555 East Washington Avenue in Las Vegas.  Your participation is key to the continued success of Nevada’s Right-to-Carry process, so please attend this important forum.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Pro-Gun Legislation Passes in State House
Despite fierce opposition from Governor John Lynch, House Bill 334 and House Bill 536 passed in the state House of Representatives and will now go to the state Senate for consideration. HB 334 would strengthen current statewide firearms preemption by further prohibiting local governments or state agencies from enacting ordinances or regulations for the use of firearms. HB 536 would repeal the existing law that requires a person to have a concealed firearm license in order to carry concealed.

NEW MEXICO: Pro-Second Amendment Companion Bill Pre-Filed for Short Session!Recently, state Senator Bill Payne (R-ABQ) pre-filed Senate Bill 26, the Senate companion measure to House Bill 32, which was introduced in December by state Representative Bill Rehm (R-ABQ) and previously reported here.  This legislation would repeal Section 30-7-9 of the New Mexico Criminal Code, which limits the purchase of rifles and shotguns by New Mexico residents to their home state and contiguous states.

ATAC TV FIREARMS, TOM CLARKE, MARK FLINN, LENNY BOLTON, JIM FULLER, GLENN JUSTICE, JEFF HALL, NRA, HANDGUNS, RIFLES,

Students For Concealed Carry On Campus Hold National Conference

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprising over 42,000 college students, professors, college employees, parents of college students, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of state-issued concealed handgun licenses should be allowed the same measure of personal protection on college campuses that they enjoy virtually everywhere else.

This week, the group held its Second National Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.  The event featured many distinguished speakers, including author and scholar John R. Lott Jr., Professor Bob Cottrol of George Washington University, Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at the George Mason University School of Law, NRA-ILA Grassroots Division Director Glen Caroline, and NRA-ILA Grassroots Division Information Specialist Sara Adler, among others.

Topics covered included victims’ personal experiences, a debate over allowing permitted concealed handguns on college campuses, academic, legal and legislative panels, and discussions on student activism and lobbying, among others.

The event was well attended and was a great success. More here

By PETE YOST, Associated Press – Jul 11, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an effort to stem the illicit flow of weapons into Mexico, the Justice Department announced Monday that all gun shops in four Southwest border states will be required to alert the federal government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles.

The new policy comes amid criticism of a flawed federal probe aimed at dismantling large-scale arms trafficking networks along the Arizona border with Mexico.

In the probe, called Operation Fast and Furious, several agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say they were inexplicably ordered by superiors to stop tracking some small-time “straw” buyers who purchased large numbers of weapons apparently destined for drug cartels.

Twenty low-level gun buyers have been charged in the operation. In December, two assault rifles that one of the now-indicted small-time buyers under scrutiny in Fast and Furious had purchased from a gun shop in Glendale, Ariz., turned up at the scene of a shootout that killed Brian Terry, an agent of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In recent congressional testimony, ATF agent John Dodson estimated that 1,800 guns in Fast and Furious were unaccounted for and that about two-thirds are probably in Mexico.

Under the new policy, federal firearms licensees in Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico must report purchases of two or more of some types of rifles by the same person in a five-day span. The requirement applies to purchases of semi-automatic rifles that have detachable magazines and a caliber of greater than .22.

ATF estimates it will generate 18,000 reports a year.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the new reporting measure will improve the ATF’s ability to disrupt illegal weapons trafficking networks that funnel firearms to criminal organizations

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the new policy “is exactly what ATF agents on the ground told Congress — that reporting multiple sales of military-grade assault weapons is a crucial tool to identify and disrupt Mexican drug cartels engaged in gun trafficking.”

One of the critics of Operation Fast and Furious called the new policy “the height of hypocrisy.” The Obama administration is restricting the gun rights of border state citizens, “when the administration knowingly and intentionally allowed guns to be trafficked into Mexico,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

“Limiting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens is not going to solve the problem,” Smith said.

Mexico’s federal security spokesman, Alejandro Poire, praised Obama’s action.
SWAF NEWS WIRE
ATF estimates the requirement will cover nearly 8,500 gun store operators in the four states, though less than 30 percent of those operators are expected to have multiple sales to report.

ATF will retain the information and if no investigative leads have been realized after two years, it will be purged.

Holders of federal firearms licenses already report multiple sales of handguns. The results go to the National Tracing Center, and ATF says it has led to successful prosecutions for firearms trafficking.

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: August 3, 2011

The N.R.A. is bringing the lawsuit in the name of two firearms dealers in Arizona. Its complaint asks a judge in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia to issue an injunction barring enforcement of the rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“N.R.A. has always viewed this as a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to pursue their gun control agenda through back-door rule-making, and the N.R.A. will fight them every step of the way,” said Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the gun rights group.

But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Justice Department would “vigorously oppose” the N.R.A. challenge.

“We think that the action we have taken is consistent with the law,” Mr. Holder told reporters on Wednesday, “and that the measures that we are proposing are appropriate ones to stop the flow of guns from the United States into Mexico.”

The rule requires licensed firearms dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas to report whenever someone buys more than one weapon like a variant of the AK-47 assault weapon within five days. The rule covers any semiautomatic rifle capable of accepting a detachable magazine and ammunition larger than .22 caliber.

The rule is meant to make it harder for Mexican drug cartels to obtain military-style weapons and smuggle them to Mexico, where they are illegal to sell to consumers. American weapons — often bought by “straw buyers” who have a right to buy them for themselves — have been flooding across the Southwest border for years, fueling drug violence in Mexico.

Firearms dealers across the United States have long been required to report similar bulk sales of handguns. But the N.R.A. suit notes that the reporting rule for handgun sales was enacted by Congress as part of the statute that sets rules for licensed firearms dealers. That statute also says dealers shall not be required to report information “except as expressly provided by this section,” and the N.R.A. contends that the firearms bureau has no authority to impose a reporting requirement on long guns.

But Scot Thomasson, a spokesman for the agency, said the N.R.A. was wrong. The licensing statute requires dealers to keep records about gun sales generally, he noted, and it also says that the attorney general may require dealers to report to the government whatever information from such records as he “may specify.”

Mr. Thomasson said the courts had upheld similar regulations in the past, and noted that the rule requiring dealers to report bulk handgun sales had been imposed by the firearms agency for several years before Congress, in 1986, passed legislation codifying it as a statute.

While the suit is being paid for by the N.R.A., it is being brought in the name of the two Arizona dealers, J&G Sales of Prescott and Foothills Firearms of Yuma. The complaint said that about 8,479 licensed dealers were in the four states affected by the rule.

The two dealers had received a letter from the director of a federal firearms tracing center directing them to start reporting bulk long gun sales made after Aug. 14. But the court complaint said that complying with the rule would be costly and that the dealers could lose business from customers who would be deterred because of the loss of privacy.

The complaint also contended that the tracing center, in compiling the reports of bulk sales, might violate a separate prohibition imposed by Congress that prevents the Justice Department from keeping a centralized database of gun purchase records.

The dispute over the regulation comes at a time when the firearms bureau’s efforts to investigate straw purchasing and smuggling across the border have come under sharp Congressional scrutiny related to Operation Fast and Furious, an effort by the agency’s Phoenix division to uncover a large network of cartel-linked gunrunners.

In that operation, federal agents monitored straw buyers who bought about 2,000 guns, but did not intervene to arrest them or seize the weapons because they were trying to identify higher-ups in the network. But the bureau then lost track of many of the guns, some of which were smuggled into Mexico and two of which later turned up at the scene of a shootout in Arizona where an American Border Patrol agent was killed.

Read the complete article here

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The viewers can email a question directly to the ATAC TV Staff on the topics of Firearms and Tactics to:

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We value and appreciate your support from all of the ATAC TV Channels and hope that you will take us up on “Ask the ATAC Guys” on each channel. You never know, your question just may be answered and addressed on a future program on ATAC TV! Some examples of one of questions asked:

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Tom Clarke & The ATAC TV Staff

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Handgun Dry Practice Combat Reload now uploaded!

Don’t miss thiese dry practice videos.  These are the skill builder to getting your foundation built. So what happens when you shot your pistol dry, out of ammo? It happens, get it loaded as fast as possible. Tom Clarke & Mark Flinn take you through the process of how to do it with a GLOCK and 1911. It is the same procedure for 99% of all handguns. So it you are shooting a Springfield XD, H&K USP or any pistol check out the program.

Here is a link to the Free Program on ATAC TV Firearms Channel

Click here: Handgun Dry Practice Combat Reload Program