No, You Do Not Get Two Form 5 Transfers For The Price Of One

When dealing with NFA items, it often pays to consult an attorney, especially when it is for more complicated and uncommon issues.  Relying on an FFL can be give less than satisfying results sometimes.

Our story:  I had a client who was an avid firearms collector, shooter, and owner, not to mention a very nice guy.  I had setup an NFA trust for him quite a few years back, and he had NFA items both in the trust and he had prior NFA purchases titled to himself individually.

Sadly he passed away in 2017.  

I then handled his estate and transferred everything to his heir, who was his sister.  She's a nice lady and has a long-term boyfriend who's also a great and friendly guy. I saved her a ton of money as a less-than-scrupulous FFL dealer had offered her $3,000 for his entire collection.

Let's put it this way - just one of his firearms was worth more than $3,000 alone. I managed to hook her up with honest direct buyers where she got fair prices for the firearms that netted her over ten times that of the FFL's massive low-ball offer.

I also transferred the NFA items via Form 5s to her. 

Form 5 is a tax exempt transfer, so no $200 tax is required, and they tend to get processed reasonably quickly.  

Had a bit of back and forth with the NFA Branch as they wanted some additional documents, but we got that all squared away and done and legally transferred to her.  End of story.

Or so I thought.

I get a call a few weeks ago from her and her now husband, that ATF NFA Branch is asking for further documents.  Even worse I get the bad news that she has stage 4 cancer.

This is peculiar.  They said the NFA Branch letter was looking for certain documents on the transfer that they had never requested before, so I go through and retrieve the requested documents and send them to her ASAP.  Most of them are probate closure documents showing the estate was completed in 2017, which it was.

Sadly she died that week.

I then meet her husband last week as they had just got another inquiry letter and I had him come in to take a look at what was wanted as over the phone it just didn't make any sense.

There was a reason for that.

It turns out the inquiry is not about the transfer of the items I assisted with in 2017.

It's about a transfer of the same items in 2020.

It turns out she sold all the NFA items to an FFL dealer in late 2020.

The dealer instead of doing Form 4s as transfers from the sister to him, instead did them all on Form 5s, naming the estate and the sister jointly as the transferors, and the dealer even signed as the transferor and as transferee.

No you really can't do that.  Not when they've already been legally transferred out of the estate in 2017.  Very much not the way to try and save $200 on each item.  The dealer also messed up the serial number on one of the items to make it all even better.

Not good, and it now makes sense why NFA Branch is very unhappy with the paperwork.  This is because the paperwork is fundamentally flawed junk.

This is what we call a mess. Thankfully it's not my mess. That FFL now has some explaining to do.

Weekend Knowledge Gain: USPSA NROI Range Officer Course

So this weekend each morning I got up early, walked the dog, and then headed to Romulus for the Level 1 Range Officers Seminar.

Since I've been shooting USPSA more now, and helping out as a range officer at my local club, I decided to get official.

A huge benefit of the class is you get to understand the rules better as a result of taking the class, so you become a better range officer and a better shooter within the rules as well.

Wondering why you got that procedural or how you got that score?  The class explains the whys, the hows, and the wherefores. 

Teaching the class was the always awesome Gary J.  - a Range Master Instructor, very experienced shooter, course designer, and RO.  In short, he knows what he's talking about, has extensive experience doing what he's talking about, and knows how to teach it.

Gary was excellent as the instructor and highly effective in imparting a ton of required knowledge in a very short time. 

A very good bunch of students were talking the class - 26 in all. Ranging in age from teens to seniors and everyone had a good attitude about learning the material and being a good RO.  Being a good RO requires knowledge, judgment,  and attitude components and everyone in class certainly had the right attitude about learning and acting as an RO.  It's not about power tripping, it's about appreciating the sport and wanting it to run well and fairly.

Yesterday was spent in class going over how to be a range officer and the main rules, and how to find the answers in the rule book to things that would likely occur.  We also talked a bit about course construction and how to RO at a match including higher level matches. 

A lot of safety issues were discussed which is rather important, and we saw a few videos that illustrated what not to do.   Importantly, make sure the range is clear before starting the next shooter - Always.

Lots of learning occurred - By the end of the morning Saturday I understood the puzzle of the target perforation shot, which was one of the things driving me nuts previously.  Now I get it and why it is scored the way it is scored.

Lunch was BBQ and it was awesome.

After lunch, we returned to discuss disqualifications and related matters.

Then we went over some best RO practices and started going over the range commands.  Getting the range commands perfect is actually important and in some cases giving the wrong range command can cause a re-shoot to occur or even worse,  shooter confusion and a potentially unsafe situation.  Often shooters at larger matches may be traveling and are not be fluent in English and instead rely on the exact commands to know what to do.   So, memorizing range commands correctly was a must.

So,  Saturday night I spent a few minutes memorizing the range commands as instructed, this paid off Sunday morning.

Sunday was drizzling a cold rain all morning, so we did a lot in the classroom first.

We  mainly worked on range commands in groups.  

Then the rubber guns came out and there would be an RO, a scorekeeper and a shooter and the "shooter" drew a card to see what he would do.  Many cards had the shooter shoot the scenario straight, but others had them commit a safety or procedural violation, or otherwise act in strange ways such as not paying attention to the range commands and the RO and scorekeeper had to sort it out and know what was happening and what to do and what rule applied and if a procedural, a quick admonition,  or a disqualification was appropriate.  

Hi-jinks ensued, learning occurred.

Then on to the range for a couple live fire runs without any deliberate safety violations but with the  shooter retaining the right to cause procedural problems or ham it up without flagging anyone or deliberately acting in an unsafe manner.

Interestingly enough, it turns out one of the readers of my blog from Traverse City was attending the class and he figured out it was me.  It was very nice to meet the gentleman and we had a good conversation during some of the downtime.

I'm happy to report that I was the first one to do a clean run live as a range officer - no command mistakes, scoring mistakes,  or bad positioning or other mess ups on my part, which was happy-making. 

Lots of learning occurred just by watching others as the live fire exercises played out - scoring issues would come up, positioning issues came up and lots of range commands needed to be made clear.  All good stuff.

Now to do the online test and I'll be official.

The NROI Level One RO class is a great way to be able to better understand the rules of USPSA and to enable you to help your club or section in holding matches.  I certainly learned a lot, and will be a much better range officer and USPSA shooter as a result.

Education Gone Woke: Getting The Right Answers In Math And More Is Now White Supremacy Culture

Critical Race Theory first infiltrated and infected the higher echelons of Academia and its now spread to the corporate world (See Coca-Cola telling its white employees to try to act less white for example)  the entertainment world - see the cancellation of Gina Carano and the current force-feeding of BLM and woke theology in just about every show these days)

Now its working its way down the educational chain into primary and secondary schools.

See for example the curriculum at  Equitablemath.org:

Highlights from the first section alone include such gems as: 

We see white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom can show up when:

• The focus is on getting the “right” answer.

• Independent practice is valued over teamwork or collaboration.

• “Real-world math” is valued over math in the real world.

• Participation structures reinforce dominant ways of being.

• Teachers enculturated in the USA teach mathematics the way they learned it.

• Expectations are not met.

• Addressing mistakes.

• Teachers are teachers and students are learners.

• Math is taught in a linear fashion and skills are taught sequentially, without consideration of prerequisite knowledge.

• State standards guide learning in the classroom.

• Procedural fluency is preferred over conceptual knowledge.

• “Good” math teaching is considered an antidote for mathematical inequity for Black, Latinx, and multilingual students.

• Rigor is expressed only in difficulty.

• “I do, we do, you do” is the format of the class.

• Students are required to “show their work.”

• Grading practices are focused on lack of knowledge.

Note this insanity of course comes from California, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation providing "generous financial support" for this insanity.

First, it is amazingly racist to deem math a matter of white superiority and "white supremacy culture".  Many races and ethnicity of all sorts are rather upset with this unfounded assertion.

Second, it's even more amazingly racist towards black and brown people and "multi-lingual" people [seriously - what?] to claim that getting "the right answer", being required to "show your work",  "Addressing mistakes",  having "expectations",  "procedural fluency",  and that teachers are expected to be teachers and students are expected to be students are somehow signs and features of white supremacy culture.

Just imagine if the real-life Black women of NASA in Hidden Figures when asked by astronauts for their orbital calculations simply replied: 

"Sorry, we can't be expected to meet those expectations and getting the right answer and then showing how we did that is a matter of white supremacy culture - hope y'all have a good launch and good luck"

Just imagine if Jaime Escalante, when teaching his Hispanic students about calculus and advanced math, that instead of inspiring and challenging his students to learn and excel instead just said:

    "That's just white supremacy culture esse, you can't be expected to learn that or get the right answer, just go back to the barrio."

I think we've gone past the soft bigotry of low expectations and have started hitting the hard stuff.  

Would you want anyone designing a bridge, vehicle, or doing financial calculations, or anything else for that matter related to math not being concerned with getting the right answer, showing their work, etc?

It's bad enough that Gates inflicted Common Core on the nation, now he's funding an even more destructive Common Wokeness on our nation.

Stuff Kids Say - High School Edition

The kids just returned back to school (via Zoom from home) after their break (also at home).

Leah reporting on her school day today while we were together eating dinner:

"Just finished the drug and alcohol unit in Health - Now, I know how to make a killer Long Island Ice Tea!"

The kid's got perfect timing, and yes, some liquids were coughed up in response.

Cause And Effect: Michigan Government Creates A Propane Shortage, Declares Emergency To Address It

Nothing like government causing a problem to have the same government step in and announce an emergency 

It's not like Governor Half-Whit can't say she wasn't warned what would happen with her enviro greenie regulations.

The Detroit Free Press: Whitmer to revoke Enbridge oil pipeline easement in Straits of Mackinac

The Detroit News: What a Line 5 shutdown would mean for Michigan's energy

Sure enough, she closed the line and -

Today:  Whitmer signs executive order to ensure adequate propane distribution

Well, when you shut down a pipeline delivering 756,000-gallons-a-day, 65% of the UP's propane and 55% of the state's propane supply, and you certainly don't have the trucks to replace that, you get a propane shortage.  This of course comes as a complete surprise to our governor who doesn't seem to get the concept of cause and effect.

  You also of course get a lot more road traffic and pollution from all those trucks now driving with lots of overtime and risks of road accidents and spillage,  trying to do what a pipeline was doing in a very environmentally friendly fashion.  So higher energy prices and shortages result, along with more actual environmental damage.

 But that's ok, because pipelines are bad now, right?

Catch and Release, and Catch and Release, and Catch and Release Again

It's very refreshing for criminals when they do not have to post bail and instead are released immediately upon arrest.

In this way with no cash bail,  they can become a one-criminal daily crime wave.

FoxKTVU: California man arrested three times in one day, given citation and released due to state zero-bail policy

Dijon Landrum was arrested for braking into and stealing a car at around 8:28 am.

He was arrested and then immediately released without bail.

An hour later he was caught leaving a home with stolen property.

He was arrested and then immediately released without bail.

Less than twelve hours later, at 8:28pm he was then arrested again after  fleeing officers after stealing another car.  

Yes, he was again booked and released without bail.

3 felonies in less than 24 hours.  Oh, and he's still free to wander and commit more crimes.

This no cash bail policy so highly touted by the progressives as being just and equitable for the poor is instead releasing criminals to prey upon poor communities and others with impunity. Great for criminals but leading to rising crime rates everywhere its been tried. 

Sadly our local newly elected progressive county prosecutor is pushing for eliminating cash bail as well.  Expect crime to rise here in a similar fashion as a result.

New Tires Have A Remarkable Effect

There's been even more snowfall in the past few days, and I've been stuck driving while its falling more often than not recently. 

In regards to slipping in the snow, I found I needed to have new tires as my previous set was down to 2-3 mm, which partly explained some of why I was having problems getting up (and down) the driveway.

I then got some new Michelin tires installed and the difference is rather remarkable.  Much, much more control and traction.  Even with them tires being all-season they're acting like a winter tire.  Drove home in a snowstorm last night with nary a problem and even made it up the Driveway of Doom™and into the garage with over an inch of snow upon it.  Very nice and the old tires would not have done that.

Replacing tires is expensive, but the increase in traction and handling over worn out tires makes it well worth it.  The bank account is not happy, but the safer handling and control is very happy making.

A Little Stuck

So Abby got stuck in the snow with her car this morning.

How stuck?  Completely stuck with wheels spinning fruitlessly stuck.

I first tried to dig around the snow she was stuck in to give the wheels some purchase, but no dice, even with me pushing the car as she tried to move it forward and back and forward again.

I then grabbed some of the extra gravel I had stored that was leftover from the parking pad project and I scooped copious amounts of gravel under the front of her tires to help them get some traction.

That did the trick combined with my pushing the car forward.

A great and freezing cold way to start the morning it's about 6 degrees Fahrenhit out there right now,  which made the whole experience extra pleasant.