The ATF’s approach means that each industry member that asks a question about how to apply or interpret the rules gets its own private answer, an answer that none of its competitors knows about and which does not serve as a legal precedent. It means that no one in the industry has any certainty, not even the firm that asked the question in the first place, because the ATF can always change a decision it made in a private “no-action” letter later on. And it means that the ATF has almost complete discretion in how it regulates, because it is creating no precedents. [More]Some of us have asked about that. But we're just a small cadre in a tangled web.
Don't expect anybody with actual power and/or reach to demand transparent consistency.
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1 comment:
This is exactly how government works. Rules are never written in stone. We deal with the EPA in our line of business. You can never get anyone to commit to an answer. It's all about issuing fines and collecting money.
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