Democrat Amen Brown Talks “Ghost Guns” At PA Gun Shows

PHILADELPHIA, PENN –-(Ammoland.com)- The twist and turns in the FOAC vs. JSD Supply saga over sales of unfinished firearms kits continue.

The main players are FOAC president Kim Stolfer, JSD Supply President Jordan Vinroe, Philadelphia Representative Amen Brown, Eagle Arms Productions’ Owner Joel Koehler, and PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro. I have spoken to both Stolfer and Vinroe to get their side of the story. Now we have Rep. Amen Brown’s side of the story.

For transparency, I am heavily involved in the gun rights movement with another organization that has fought against any infringement on the Second Amendment and have taken the Pennsylvania AG to task for his attempts to ban unfinished receivers. I also include the raw audio of my phone call with Rep Brown for fairness. This article is a summary of that phone call.

Representative Amen Brown says he isn’t anti-gun. He says he loves guns. It was clear that Brown doesn’t understand firearms.

He might disagree, but it is evident to anyone with a passing knowledge of firearms. He is open to learning which is better than most Democrats. I have connected Rep Brown and Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter.

Rep. Brown said he attended the Morgan Town gun show. He said it wasn’t the sale of the kits that bothered him, but it was the kits’ accessibility. He said he walked up to the table wearing a mask and hood. He didn’t buy anything. He talks about a guy buying two duffle bags of kits. Later in the interview, he admits that he doesn’t know if the buyer was a criminal or just a gun owner.

Rep. Brown went on to tell me that someone from the AG’s Office introduced him to Eagle Arms Productions’ Owner Joel Koehler. He talked to Koehler about the accessibility of the Polymer80 kits. He suggested the gun show make a copy of everyone’s ID and then shred it to discourage criminals from attending the shows.

Rep. Brown said the conversation continued until they concluded that the kits’ sale at the shows needed to stop. Two days later, the AG announced a sting in Philadelphia, where police recovered some of the kits that the criminals purchased at the Morgan Town show. After that, he said he spoke to Koehler on the phone, and it was decided that Eagle Arms would ban the kits sale.

Brown said that someone from Eagle Arms reached out to the AG’s Office to tell them that the company would no longer allow the sale of the Polymer80 kits at Eagle Arms gun shows. He said he was excited about the agreement. The following Monday, the AG did a press conference about the end of the kits’ sale at the shows. He said the intention was to change the process so “one bad apple will not spoil the bunch.”

Shortly after the news broke, Eagle Arms contacted the Guns N Gadgets YouTube channel and others and said no one applied pressure to the company to ban P80 sales. Rep. Brown and Stolfer (information from internal emails) both contradicts the statements. I would like to speak with Koehler to dig into this, but he has not returned my email.

Rep. Brown said Stolfer and he started a dialog because his bill increases the penalties for a repeat offender of a crime involving a firearm. He said Stolfer supports “in-house executive decisions” because “you don’t want to be fighting the government.” He said Stolfer dealt with it in-house, so it doesn’t get worse.

Rep. Brown claims he doesn’t want to take anyone’s guns away, but later, he did say he wants to ban magazines that hold a large number of rounds. He didn’t give a number but said police are finding pistols with drum magazines at crime scenes.

Brown said every issue doesn’t need legislation. I pushed Rep. Brown on the “ghost guns” bills currently introduced in the PA legislature. After pushing him, Rep. Brown went on record and promised not to vote for the “ghost guns” bills. PA citizens need to push Brown to keep his word.

Rep. Brown was not aware of JSD Supply and Eagle Arms coming to an agreement to allow P80s to be sold once again but was upset at the terms when I explained it to him. When I told him they were coming back, he said, “we’ll see.” It isn’t clear if Rep. Brown will try to block JSD Supply’s triumphant return to Eagle Arms shows.

He thinks he needs a seat at the table before Eagle Arms makes any decisions. I asked if he felt if it was hypocritical to in one breath say “private businesses can do what they want” when it only applies when they do something that makes you happy. Brown said he never said private businesses could do what they want. He said people could take the decision as a slap in the face.

He said he gets that people want to build their own guns but took an emotional approach. He brought up innocent women and children killed every day by P80s in Philadelphia. I could not find a case in Philadelphia where someone shot a child with a P80.

I wanted to go beyond the unfinished firearms kit issue and get into where Rep. Brown stands on gun laws. He claims to be pro-gun, so I tried to put him to the test. As I stated before, he is for magazine restrictions, which he calls “clips.”

I pushed him on universal background checks. He didn’t know what UBCs was so I explained it to him. I gave him an example where a man gives a gun to his brother. He was “OK” with a background check requirement at an FFL, for that instance.

Rep. Brown didn’t know too much about registries and so-called “assault weapons” bans, so he didn’t know if he supported either of those issues. The last question was on bans of magazines of specific sizes, which I covered earlier in the article.

Is Rep. Amen Brown anti-gun? That is for you to decide.

About John Crump

John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.