Thoughts on “defining”? What’s the end game?Definition of “Frame or Receiver” and Identification of Firearms | Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
The end game is control of lawful people. This doesn’t help crime.
The end game is completely subjective standards for what defines a frame or receiver so that it is harder to buy parts and so that anyone can be prosecuted for any reason if they have an unpopular opinion that the government does not like. A subjective standard allows persecution of the people by whoever is in power (rule of man vs rule of law). This will make firearms harder to build so that fewer people are able to exercise their rights and the people can be controlled.
It isn’t about the gun. It is about the control.
It’s no secrete that they want 80% receivers gone. This is their roundabout way of doing that. Instead of coming out and saying on June 1st all 80% receivers are banned! They’re saying, well anything that houses the hammer mechanism needs to be serialized and registered. Doesn’t matter if it started as a 50%, 75%, 80%, 95% or 100%. So if you purchased an 80% receiver and it gets shipped to your door because it’s not an FFL item and at that moment, can’t house a trigger, well that’s just fine. But if you mill it and make it capable of housing the trigger mechanism, you now must get it engraved with a serial number and register it unlike before, you were good to go, it was an unregistered firearm.
So one would now ask, why would I spend money on an 80% receiver when I have to use my time to mill it, pay to have it engraved and have it registered when I can just buy a 100% receiver. HA! There’s their underlying slight of hand. Me personally, if I have to serialize and register an 80% receiver, what’s the point? I’ll just buy a 100% and be done with it. And unfortunately that’s what they want, and I’m sure a lot of people will think the same way as me. This is how they will try to fade Polymer80 for example, out of existence.
So now the law abiding crafty do-it-yourself citizen can still buy an 80% receiver but has to register it. However a criminal could care less 
Feel free to correct me, but from what it says, the end-maker would have to mark them with a serial, right? Not the manufacturers of the 80s? So they would still be sold unerialized, and it is up to the user to mark them?
As if any criminal finishing one would do that…
Anyway, if that’s how they run with it, our generation’s descendents are going to be handed down some of the most effective, untraceable weapons ever owned by a private population.
The way the current proposal is written, a DEALER who mills an 80% lower or a gunsmith who IN ANY WAY works on a gun without a S/N - must put a S/N on it before returning it to the owner. Private owners can still mill their own 80% lower and not put a S/N on it… but can not have a gunsmith work on it or touch it in any way.
One silver lining if the ATF DOES go through with this is that many regular folks are going to learn gunsmithing skills, so they never have to turn any of their weapons over to anyone with a license to be worked on. – I know I never will turn a lower receiver over to anyone with a license.
You are correct. The new ATF rules pertaining to 80% lowers are not as cataclysmic as some are making out. Same with the new rules regarding what is defined as a receiver. They just want to be able to prove, in court, that an AR lower receiver is IN FACT a gun. No, they are not going to be reclassifying uppers as the gun or requiring serialization. It plainly states that the new rules are not meant to change EXISTING classifications. Folks are getting worked up without reading the text in full.
What IS outrageous is the new proposed pistol brace rules. They are attempting to turn millions of legally purchased guns into illegal NFA items overnight.