Having had a full day to think about this development...
I had a well thought-out post on what I have come to understand the current situation is, what the changes are, the best guess I can come up with at their implications, and arguments to pester the State Dept and our reps with, but the site shredded it*, so... I guess I'll try again later.
In the mean time, I just want to mention that hours of my layman's scrutiny as well as the opinions of a number of much more qualified individuals haven't appreciably changed my understanding of the massive expansion in censorship threatened by this rule change. It also doesn't seem that many prominent bloggers, news sites, forum discussions, or posters have conclusively determined there is nothing to worry about with these new regulations. It's about the same ratio of doom-sayers and fuggedaboutits as when the M855 thing first got going.
That to me raises all sorts of red flags.
So while I try to recollect my thoughts as best I can, I want to say that I think it is important we come up with well-reasoned, cogent arguments opposing this rule (regardless of whether you happen to think it's 'overblown' or whatever) so that large numbers of forum-going gunnies can construct quality objection letters to submit to the State Department. What I know for sure so far, is that ITAR is a far more complex issue than Armor Piercing ammunition, and that the State Department has far greater legal and political forces at its disposal. Turning this around will be difficult, I'm afraid, but perhaps by spreading as good an understanding of the situation as possible (since God knows the media won't, and most gun bloggers/posters aren't capable of the legal analysis required to hash this --myself included for sure) we can delay this rule adoption long enough to get another guy in the White House that we can perhaps deal with amicably. I think that's the best we can do.
TCB
*ETA: I've been informed my phrasing here suggested action on the part of the moderators; no, a site refresh glitch (since my machine is set to store no cookies, I am logged out periodically when they expire) ate the post