SITREP: JUNE 2005

By Dan Shea

I am sitting on a plane, flying back from Germany and Yugoslavia. Much ado about something in both places. The IWA show in Nurnberg was outstanding, although there really weren’t a whole lot of new products displayed. Taser had a rail unit to mount on an M4 carbine forend, Eagle had some nice new gear, to mention a couple of items. Robert Hausman will be bringing us the IWA report soon. Yugoslavia- more specifically Serbia, was of great interest. The “Living History” shoot was being planned for late April, and I went over to check out their preparations. We fired everything from 40mm Bofors to M80 LAW style rockets to SMGs, to DSHk 38/46s. I will bring the article from their first “Living History” later this year. It is nice to see members of the small arms shooting community get together and have the opportunity to live fire with HE rounds and rare weapons.

Perhaps more interestingly on the world scene, I didn’t notice as much anti-American sentiment as the last few trips to Germany. Perhaps the pending loss of the bases we have there and the incumbent loss of US Dollars into the economy might have gotten some attention. I do love Germany and hope that we can keep a good relationship. They do, after all, make some great guns.

In this issue, we were trying to present a nice medley of firearms that would complement the National Defense Industrial Association’s Small Arms Symposium. This is in May in Atlantic City this year. I would like to encourage the readers who are professionals in the small arms community to consider joining NDIA, this important organization is a great resource for all of us. NDIA has many meetings all year long, as evidenced by the SO-LIC article that intrepid reporter Robert Bruce brings us in this issue.

One of the things I am greatly looking forward to next week, is the founding meeting of the National Firearms Act Trade & Collectors Association on the Wednesday before Knob Creek. The NFATCA meeting will be history by the time you read this, but in coming months we will bring you the skinny on what this high powered, well funded lobbying trade group has on the schedule to address. I know the first order of business has already been agreed to by the ATFE. Number One? We are having consultants write the NFA procedures manual.

Why is that such a big deal? Well, all of the intricacies of transfers, registrations, procedures, etc are all what we would call “Institutionalized Knowledge”. This means that the pending retirement of the few people at ATFE who are intimately familiar with all procedures will throw a huge cog in the machinery of all of our transfers and registrations. The second effect is that once the ATFE takes this NFA Procedures Manual, vets it, adopts it, and puts in into effect, the entire NFA community from ATK and General Dynamics down to individual collectors, will be playing from the same page for what is legal, what is not, and how to do things. The third effect, is this new NFA Procedures Manual will be the manual for all ATFE field offices and all agents and inspectors. Everyone will be on the same page at all times. We think this is one of the most important milestones in the history of the National Firearms Act and ATFE we and are happy they will work with us to get this done. I will update y’all on it as it happens-

Dan