March 1st, 1999
Honorable Wally Herger, MOC
Sam Rayburn Building
Washington, D.C.
Dear Wally,
Recently a few members of the Military Vehicle Preservation Association
explained a problem to me that I now want to bring to your attention. It
seems the BATF is suddenly not issuing the necessary permit or document needed
to import historic and collector grade ex-military vehicles. According to my
sources the BATF requires an importation form similar in nature and purpose to
the form required for buying a legal firearm. By not issuing a "form 6," the
BATF effectively shuts down commerce on such vehicles.
Of course these vehicles are not armed with any weapons and they have been
completely demilitarized as required by current federal law. Simply stated,
collectors and historians want to preserve a part of history and the BATF is
stopping them. You should know that many of their (mil-veh) projects wind up
in public museums. Some are used in patriotic parades and a few even go to
private display for various commercial purposes, including movie props. But,
in all this wide spread activity there has never been a single incident where
such a vehicle has been used for an illegal or dangerous purposes, not once!
It troubles me why the BATF has imposed this restraint without public
notice, without any public commentary or without open legislative discussion
on the matter? They simply said no and put a lot of people out of business!
I believe you and I are equally concerned about such unfair, if not
undemocratic process as imposed by BATF.
Whatever the source or reason for this silly action, it needs to be
examined. I suspect this stupidity has its roots in the 1960's, where
anything military was bad and anything that hurt the military was good. Those
radical 60's types are now in high places and as demonstrated by BATF, are
able to jerk people around thanks to their decades old misconpetions and false
prejudices. Little groups like the harmless MVPA are at their mercy. The
MVPA is organized as a 501 3-c non-profit organization and as a result it can
not even lobby on it's own behalf, so people like you and I have to do it for
them. Note, their membership is small in numbers, but there cause is
compelling
and worthy.
Wally would you kindly look into this see what's going on? Hopefully you
can at least offer us some reasoning behind the action, if not make some
change back to the status quo.
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