Good riddance to 2010

This is the last day of a year I’m glad to see finally ending. Health wise, I’ve had two surgeries, on my neck and my right knee, to correct structural problems. The right knee problem resulted in some curtailing of my fishing season and totally missing the moose hunting season.

I lost my seat on the Alaska Board of Fisheries (BOF) because I tried looking out for the state’s fisheries resources as a first priority. That irritated a sportsfishing-oriented group that failed to get its way on one proposal. The group’s lobbying in an election year resulted in my not receiving a renomination. I was laid off from my other part-time job. You can probably create a similar list of “downers” for this just-completed year as well.

However, I tend to look at the positive side of life and have some resolutions/expectations for the New Year. First, I need to loose weight and get back into shape. The weight loss will help on those “structural” issues as well as stand me in better stead for some hunting trips I’m planning, including a caribou hunt along the Dalton Highway. I put in for an antlerless moose permit (like thousands of others) and hope to see the permit arrive in the mail sometime this spring. Since I’m “retired,” a few more RV trips to fish or just sightsee around the state might be in the works.

And, we still have both the BOF Upper Cook Inlet meeting in February and the Board of Game Southcentral meeting in March to participate in. Not being a BOF member has allowed me the freedom to concentrate on our Northern District fisheries issues specifically, and I plan to do some lobbying with several members of the current board. See, there’s always something to look forward to.

Hopefully, the coming year will be good to you and any negative issues will resolve themselves to your advantage!

Now, let’s talk about another concern. For those thinking the Obama administration has given up on gun control and that the change in leadership of Congress will insulate us from further efforts to tighten gun control, here’s a rude awakening. I received an e-mail recently from a well-known national firearms distributor warning dealers of an impending new gun regulation.

This is a bureaucratic effort to circumvent Congress and the legislative process to require registration of guns and gunowners, perhaps because of the perception about American firearms going to Mexico and being used in that country’s drug wars. Under this regulation, gun dealers would be required to provide directly to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) the names, addresses and serial numbers for every purchase of two or more semi-auto, magazine-fed rifles by the same person within a five day period.

The e-mail contained this quote from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF): “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is moving to require federally licensed firearms retailers to report multiple sales of modern sporting rifles beginning Jan. 5, 2011. Specifically, the ATF requirement calls for firearms retailers to report multiple sales, or other dispositions, of two or more .22-caliber or larger semi-automatic rifles that are capable of accepting a detachable magazine and are purchased by the same individual within five consecutive business days.”

Before you think this doesn’t affect you, consider this. Let’s say you want to buy a couple of .22 rimfire rifles for your kids to learn to shoot and to use for small-game hunting. You want to buy a gun that will serve both purposes.

You decide on the most popular .22-caliber rimfire semi-auto rifle being made — the Ruger 10/22. You visit your favorite gun dealer and pick out two standard Ruger rifles and you begin to fill out the federally required background paperwork.

By federal law, the background check information generated by the FBI/BATFE from the dealer’s call-in must be destroyed within 24 hours if the transfer is approved. Assuming that law is being complied with, the only remaining copy of that information is on the form in the dealer’s possession. This information will not be available to anyone other than a law enforcement tracing effort or to a BATFE inspection of the dealer’s records for compliance.

However, with this proposed regulation, the dealer would now be required to fill out a separate form and submit it directly to the BATFE. This form carries no requirement to be destroyed after some short timeframe or little protection as to who has access. I suspect the information will be entered into a national database of people owning more than one semi-auto rifle.

Will this regulation help prevent crime? No! First, according to information supplied by the NSSF from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, long guns are rarely used in crime. Second, “According to ATF, the average age of a firearm (used in a crime) recovered in the United States is 11 years old. In Mexico, it’s more than 14 years old. This demonstrates that criminals are not using new guns bought from retailers in the states,” the e-mail says. And finally, “Congress, when it enacted multiple sales reporting for handguns, could have required multiple sales (reporting) of long guns — it specifically chose not to.”

You may want to contact our U.S. senators and congressman and ask them to look into this!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.