BATFE Court Decision

Keep in mind, however, that the ATFE must do two things....

At the same time, they have to contend with how many other substances on the list for which they can provide no scientific evidence?

In addition, if they're not careful with their definitions, they may cause items such as gasoline to be defined as "explosives" due to their burn rate when "used as intended", thereby causing other things to have to be regulated, as well.

-Kevin

I can only imagine what a can of worms that this has opened for the BATF. I am sure they are not happy at all with this ruling.

Jeff Barnes TRA #2267

Matches, propane, butane, dried out Christmas trees, to name a few of the worms in that can.

Counting the seconds until jerry blathers, "I told you so".. ({-)

If gasoline were proposed today as a motor fuel, the goverment would be unlikely to approve it for a number of safety reasons. If it were approved, regulations would probably be much different.

There was a lot less government back in the early 1900s.

Brian Elfert

Which, frankly, argues for less government...

David Erbas-White

What if the BATFE redefines explosives to cover many more items just so APCP is covered?

The BATFE is unlikely to just walk away and let Tripoli/NAR win.

Brian Elfert

So much the better for us. As long as some of the things they catch in their net have interest groups that are as strong, as well-run, and as responsive to their members as NAR and Tripoli, any such action will give us some nice new allies in our fight.

Kudos and thanks to the past and present boards of both organizations, the superb legal team, and anyone who has ever donated to the Legal Fund. This is the way the system is supposed to work.

Doug Pratt

looks to me that the BATFE has effectively painted themselves into a corner. to wit: They say that deflagration occurs at 1m/s or 1,000 mm/s... whereas we say its much less, while the Eof E says 3.81-101.6mm/s....

It will finally be interesting to see what the actual burn rate is....does anybody know if any of these test have already been done on our APCP propellants?

It seems to me BATFE has 2 choices: do the test and fail and we win, or just quietly drop this case, and remove APCP from the explosives list.... again we win...

How will this decision affect the other counts in the case if any ?

If they do the actual deflagration test, how will they be done? by their lab people? by an independent 3rd party? Can the test be done in the propellants native form: ie within a motor casing and in its "intended use"....?

I also did a background search on the 3 judge panel that rules in our favor and I notice they are clinton/clinton/carter appointees.... in other words all 3 are probably democrats....

so what are their options? Can they ask for a re-hearing before the full DC Court of Appeals?

shockie B)

Forget gasoline...there is an even greater threat to our health. And the government, with the help of the media, is covering it up:

There are NO Government in Taiwan... not sure if its good or bad cause just about every metal appliances you touch in Taiwan will shock you. Of course no one would give a rat's @$$ if you made rocket motors in your apartment, cause once you shoot it off it will sound like fireworks and Taiwanese loves shooting up rockets in close proximity. I think there is a festival where just about everyone there shoots up rocket in a Time Square during new year crowd. People do get hurt... at least in Taiwan I don't have to go with KNAR code cause I could just make something that goes boom in the sky and not have to worry about recovery. With the amount of buildings in Taiwan im not even sure if recovery is possible...

and chem supply stores will sell chemicals to anyone with enough cash, there are no regulation on that. Only time the big brothers care is if you make firearm or bombs cause they are illegal.

-- TAI FU

I meant to say NAR safety code (damm the stupid spell checker..)

-- TAI FU

It's pretty darn hard to get APCP to burn at 1.0 inch per second at pressures that our casing can stand. Pretty far from ANY reasonable definition of deflagration.

so if APCP get dropped does Al's Hobbies get a refund?

Nuts, can someone search the archives and see if I made any bets on this? for some reason the number $100 comes to mind.....

It also publicizes to the world that the BATFE was caught with their pants down. This ruling doesn't affect APCP, it affects the entire list. Which means that everything on the list is now under scrutiny. It also means that anyone currently convicted of any explosives possession charge since 1970 may get a "get out of jail free" card. I can't believe that the BATFE has been so stupid as to not realize that this would be the outcome when they lost this ruling. OK, maybe I CAN believe they are that stupid.

With any luck, this decision will have the same effect on the senior management at the BATFE as Katrina had on FEMAs management.

That's certainly possible. They could set the threshold low enough to include APCP. Then it will also include gasoline, railroad flares, solvents, pyrodex, and rum.

I sort of like having the BATFE regulate gasoline. It will get 99.9% of the cars and trucks off the road, leaving them empty for me. And it will reduce the demand for gasoline to the point that I can fill up my tank for loose change.

The way the system is supposed to work is for these regulatory agencies to do their job properly in the first place so we don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of $$$ and most of a decade sueing them to get them to clean up their act. And we're not done yet.

But I do recal one of the things inthe original suit was the request that the BATFE pay our legal fees for fighting their illegal regulation. Now a million bucks is peanuts to them, but if all that cash were to be returned to our hobby, it could do a LOT of good. And perhaps be a war chest to stop the next agency that thinks we'll roll over to illegal regulation.