By John Brown
As most of you know by now, the NFATCA has been working diligently with the new Firearms Technology Branch Chief, John Spencer, and Rick Vasquez and his staff to develop the Firearm Technology Branch (FTB) Procedures Manual. Like the NFA handbook, our primary objective with the FTB Procedures Manual will focus on addressing many of the critical issues that need to be documented to assist anyone in our community in not breaking the law. We want to make certain that the things we need the most for reference are provided to the community to clear up any misunderstandings that we may have in the industry. We want to document the things that many of us think we already understand and know. We want to include everything from proper submissions to much of the information that our Firearms Attorney has included in his monthly The Legal Side columns in this publication.
The problem most of us experience is that this information is not always readily available. No one wants to wade through a ton of old magazines or old articles searching for information that in the end may not be what you really need. Out of pure frustration what most of us do is either consult a fellow dealer or manufacturer or we write a letter to the FTB and ask for clarification. Hence, the primary objective of the FTB procedures manual is to clear up any misunderstandings and to document procedures that you should follow whether it’s getting a new firearm approved for manufacture or getting a clarification on a modification you want to make to an existing weapons system.
We mentioned last month that we want to focus on developing information from many members of our own community concerning interests or concerns that you may have about the right way to do things in the firearms business.
Official Call for Help
The NFATCA has already, in cooperation with FTB, developed an outline that we are working from to get all of the information organized and written so that we have a comprehensive set of regulations out the door in version 1.0 of the first release. What we are missing is feedback from our own ranks on information or issues that you want included in this publication: hence the call for help. What we want to avoid is having the first version hit our ranks and to have everyone complain that we left something out critical to the message in this manual.
So in essence we are now saying, “Here’s your chance.” We are officially asking that anyone and everyone in the community submit information to the NFATCA on anything that you want to suggest that we include in the first volume of this procedures manual.
To submit information, simply log onto www.nfatca.org, log into the FTB Users Forum and input your suggestions. We want it all and are asking you to provide questions, issues, or information that you personally think would be helpful to be addressed. Once you submit the information we will review it and get back to you with any feedback, questions or other information that we feel might be useful in addressing the issue.
This is your opportunity to make the contribution or get an issue addressed for the entire community. The entire board of directors of the NFATCA is thoroughly enjoying the work with the FTB effort and we want to get our entire community involved.
As we gather the information, NFATCA board members are actually writing the text and beginning the collaborative review process with FTB, but we don’t want to miss anything. We need your help.
Watch for future articles describing the specifics on our progress.
Be a part of the NFA success story and join us at the NFATCA. (www.nfatca.org)
| This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V11N4 (January 2008) |
