One of Clients has submitted a comment to 41P and given us permission to post a copy as it is not likely that it will appear on the published comments before the time to respond has closed. You may want to use parts of this comment to help you express your personal experiences or situation.
In summary, this comment discusses
Below Summary of the issues covered in Attorney Glenn Bellamy’s 41P comments and exhibits:
In response to 41P we have asked others to send and inquiry to their local police to determine if ATF’s proposed changed to the CLEO signature would make a difference in the policy to provide or not to provide signatures on Form 1 or Form 4 applications. Below is the type of response we are looking for to provide in future comments to the ATF. If you have received a response from your local police department, please print a copy of your inquiry, the response and draft a short verified statement telling your story . Sign it under penalty of perjury and then send it to us to be submitted in additional comments that are being prepared.
Response from Orlando Police Orlando-police-letter.pdf
Tuesday, October 22, 2013 2:25 PM Dear Mr. Myers:
While many people will be waiting to the last-minute to file their comments to 41P, we felt that it was important to file something sooner to provide our clients and readers some guidance on preparing comments. We have created a webpage which contains our comments, exhibits, as well as a copy of 41P as published in the registry. As the comments and exhibits are over 140 pages we have included an index to the comments to help you find the information in which you have the most interest.
While we are very familiar with the NFA and ATF, administrative rule making is not something that we deal with. It is for this reason and to make sure we preserve the right to appeal any outcome that we have hired Tom Odom at the Firearms Industry Consulting Group. They are one of the finest lawyers that we work with around the country. If you are looking to have a professionally written response tailored to your involvement or objectives, I would highly recommend contacting us or them and we would be happy to help with the process.
With the exception of the ATF’s proposal to add new section 479.90 with respect to decedents’ estates, David M. Goldman opposes the remainder of the proposed rule making for the reasons set forth below and in the Exhibits to these Comments incorporated herein by reference.
ATF is answering their phones and the electronic filing is back online at http://www.atfonline.gov.
ATF reported today that they the payments are back online as of 10/22 but previously reported that they are having problems with the payments. In an email they reported:
This is to advise that ATF eForms is experiencing issues with the pay.gov link that prevents the filing of taxpaid eForms 1 and 4. The pay.gov function had to move to a secondary site last week due to some of its own issues. ATF’s firewall security is preventing communications to this secondary site from within eForms. We are in the process of working with the Department of Justice to allow the ATF firewall to communicate with the pay.gov secondary site.
Last week many people in the industry met in Washington DC to discuss issues and concerns with 41P. Besides discussing what happened leading up to 41P, the main topic of discussion was regarding that 41P this was a legal issue within rulemaking and that inappropriate or inaccurate responses could cause problems. The most important part of any response is accurate and addressing the issues with facts in such a manner as to allow for an appeal if the ATF approves their current recommendations.
Within the next week, I expect to make my comments public. While many are waiting until the last moment to present as complete a set of comments as possible, I would like to provide proper guidance to many who our clients and others whom reads our blog on a regular basis. Our comments will cover many topics and come with some details on how to use them to create your own comments but we would never suggest that you simply copy someone else’s comments even with very minor modifications. Remember comments are part of the rule making process and not a popularity contest. If you want to see our comments when they are published and be kept up to date on 41P and our efforts, I would suggest that you subscribe to our blog by clicking the subscribe button in the upper right of this page.
I was surprised to see that a major silencer company appears to be sending proposed letters to their dealers or others in the industry to provide others with a suggested letter for individuals to submit to ATF with respect to the current rule making. Remember this is rule making and not a popularity vote. There are serious problems with the ATF’s proposal, but, to read the suggested text the Silencer Company has provided to others which is being posted on the Internet you would think they merely opposed extending the requirement for a chief law enforcement officer (“CLEO”) to “gun trusts.” Let’s be clear about a few points.
NFA Gun Trust Lawyer Blog