More on the ATF’s Airsoft Machine Guns
Gunsmiths try to make them work but they don’t:
we’ve had gunsmiths try to make a WE TTI lower work with a real steel upper, and it is true that a AR trigger pack will sit in a WE lower, but the trigger mechanism is inoperable with the WE lower unless you heavily modify the body. these are not readily convertible as per customs argument.
February 28th, 2010 at 2:48 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rEuTwYALho
Unusually good reporting in this video.
Also watch carefully as the ATF agent tries to insert the magazine backwards…
February 28th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Looks like the agent had never handled and an ar before. Can you say paper pusher.
February 28th, 2010 at 10:22 am
I have been pondering this exercise in for a few seconds and I bet I know what happened. Bet someone accidentally broke one of the cases containing the “rifles”. The saw that while labeled toys they did not have orange tips. The batf is called thinking that smugglers are bringing rifles into the us. They find no serial numbers and the lack of orange tips convince them this is the real deal. Only they did not check to see if they were really toys before seizing them. Afterward a tech checks them and tells them “You idiots these are toys.” The batf in their haste to cover there asses decides that these really are really weapons convertible toys instead of outright weapons. The decision is made by a regional director because only they come up with ideas this bad. Problem is the person who owns the so called rifles is not being charged with an nfa crime or smuggling. Instead he is going after the batf with the help of local news channels thus making them appear incompetent. They have only two choices. Hope this thing dies down or charge the importer with the faux violations. Either way good luck getting the rifles back.
This was never a batf job. It was customs that should have handled this. Have the owners spray the tips and done,but no somebody wanted glory and a promotion so here we are.
February 28th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Never let it be said that these boys let the truth get in the way of what they wanted. This bunch should have been disbanded a long time ago, it is long over due.
March 1st, 2010 at 9:46 am
You guys are amateurs: You are not yet masters in the “Tao of the Beltway”.
I detect the unique whiff of impending appropriations hearings. The narrative has thus been laid: “BATFE saved us from the machine guns!!!!!”. It shall go unquestioned in the halls of government and in the ever-more-ignorant MSM. Presto! Now the agency has justified its funding and it shall live for yet another year. Anyone who tries to cut the BATFE down to size will be accused of being A-OK with machine-gun-wielding Tea Party crazies and gang members killing babies en masse at daycare centers across the nation.
Added bonus: this little stunt also draws attention away from the NFA registry fiasco and the (potentially explosive) finding that BATFE agents have been testifying in court for years that the registry is accurate when they KNOW it is not (i.e., committing mass perjury).