March 1st, 1999
Honorable Wally Herger, MOC
Room 2433
Sam Rayburn Office 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 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 60's types are
now in high places and as demonstrated by BATF, able to jerk people around
thanks to their decades old 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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