AUSTIN – Attorney General Paxton has joined a coalition of states in sending two Montana-led letters to FedEx Corporation and United Parcel Service (UPS) over reports that the shipping companies have updated their terms of service for gun store owners.
The new terms reportedly require any individuals who possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL) to comply with burdensome, intrusive, and potentially illegal corporate regulations. The letters note that FFL holders “allege that the new regulations allow your company to track firearm sales with unprecedented specificity and bypass warrant requirements to share that information with federal agencies.”
The shippers are not only requiring FFL holders to create new separate shipping accounts for firearms, firearm parts, and other firearm-related shipments, but they also ask gun store owners to retain documents about specific shipments and make those available to the companies upon request. The shippers can then send those documents to the federal government at their discretion.
As the letters point out, this presents an enormous threat to the 2nd Amendment and could very well violate federal law: “[Y]our policies allegedly allow [you] to ‘comply with . . . requests from applicable law enforcement or other governmental authorities’ even when those requests are ‘inconsistent or contrary to any applicable law, rule, regulation, or order.’ In doing so you—perhaps inadvertently—give federal agencies a workaround to federal law, which has long prevented federal agencies from using gun sales to create gun registries.”
Attorney General Paxton and the coalition conclude the two letters by asking for the updated shipping agreements, requesting answers to severalquestions, and recommending that they immediately halt any warrantless information sharing with federal agencies.
To read the letters, click here.
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I grew up hunting and target shooting. I've been buying, selling, trading and shooting guns for decades. In the 70s and early 80s a person could spend 129.00 and buy a military surplus 30 cal carbine rifle. The carbines had 30 rd magazines available (same as an AR15). 30 cal ammo was cheap and plentiful. The paratrooper model had a folding wire stock and pistol grip. When folded you could easily conceal this weapon. There have been since the 1920s a variety of semi auto rifles available to the public. There was a time an average person could buy a Thompson machine gun with a 50 rd ammo drum.
Not until the last 20 years or so have school shootings and other mass murders become so common place. What some people refer to as assault weapons have been around for 100 years. People can blame guns all they want but they apparently aren't the problem. It's time to look elsewhere, like video games where a 12 year old role plays and shoots a stranger in the face. After his brains and blood blow out the back of his head the player can then steal the car for game points. How about some movies where you need a calculator to keep up with the body count. How about the media constantly sensationalizing mass shootings, murders rapes, racial conflict and whatever just to raise ratings. How about the number of kids raised by the streets because of their parents doing a pathetic job. It's time to look at the real problems and quit using the availability of guns as the main reason for violence.
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