Today, Chief Justice Roberts denied a motion to stay the bump-fire ban rule pending a final ruling by the courts. If you possess a bump stock, you are now a felon.
When Trump announced his intent to ban bump-fire stocks, Kool-Aid swigging idiots laughed it off. Nah; he’s posturing for the press.
When he sent his memo directing DOJ to begin crafting the rule, it was, Nah, they’ll ‘research’ it and ‘decide’ it isn’t called for.
When the ATF published the ANPRM, morons said, Nah; it’s a trick. They’ll take comments and ‘decide’ it’s unjustified, but Trump still gets to pretend he tried.
When the NPRM came out… rinse, lather, repeat.
When the final rule was published, the sandy-eyed ostriches declared, Don’t worry. Trump is a four-dimensional chess master; he knows the courts will overturn it. He’s gaming the system.
As the ban deadline approached without a favorable ruling from any court, the bird-brains nervously added, Um… the courts will temporarily stay the ban. Right?
When stays were issued on appeal, for the named plaintiffs ONLY, some folks optimisticallythought that was a blanket stay, and sighed in relief. It wasn’t.
When Guedes et al was appealed to the Supreme Court, the Pollyannas were sure they’d issue the stay, or at least remand back to the lower court to do so.
So here we are. I was never terribly hopeful about this because I lost faith in the courts a long time ago.
But… we are screwed.
The lawsuits challenging the ban continue. I’m sure people in denial are sure reality will win out. Look again: the lower courts have stated will every denial of a stay that the plaintiff are unlikley to succeed. That is, they are signalling that the ban will be upheld and they are going through the motions (no pun intended) merely for the sake of appearances.
And today, by refusing a stay, Roberts just said exactly the same thing: “You lose.” We lose bump-fire stocks. And remember my warnings about those semi-autos “easily converted” to machineguns with bump-fire stocks.
And anything and everything else that some bureaucrat decides he doesn’t like. Because all this hinged on a single point: Can unelected bureaucrats redefine common language to create law all by themselves?
Now we know the answer is yes, and the ATF declared hundreds of thousands of people to be felons. And that was a signal to every other bureaucrat in every other federal agency and department: Do whatever you want.
Today, Trabants became M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tanks, on the whim of a bureaucrat, on the suggestion of a man with no respect for the Constitution and rule of what used to pass for law.
[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]
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If you can’t read that (the rubber bands interfered with scanner focus):
To whom it may concern,
Please find enclosed 1 “baker’s dozen” (representing the 13 colonies which rose up in armed rebellion in response to an attempted confiscation) potential bump-stock-type devices (BSTD).
While I realize that you have argued that rubber bands are not BSTDs, I choose not to take the chance, since rubber bands can provide the same spring effect of an Akins Accelerator-type device, and the ATF has a history of pseudo-random changes of mind (shoelaces coming to mind).
Please be assured that I am not in possession of any device you do consider to be a BSTD “machinegun,” unless you change your mind about belt loops which can operate in the same fashion as a springless BSTD.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs (too late; I’m selling the truck) and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!
The deadline approaches: On Tuesday, March 26, 2019, those still holding bump stocks (with a bare few exceptions) will magically become felons as inert chunks of plastic mystically morph into post-’86 machineguns.
Hypothetically speaking (because none of TZP’s regular readers could possibly mean to become malum prohibitum criminals), what will/are you doing with your “bump-stock-type device?
“Imagine the deaths if the shooter [Las Vegas] had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get. Our grief isn’t enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again.”
“Durn tootin’, great shootin’. Cool dude sertin’ he’s 2nd Mendment rahts. Hell yeah! Every country has its psychopaths. In US they have guns.” [Mocking misspellings in the original].2
Richard Dawkins, author and famous atheist.
“The NRA, a vile organization with a sinister, deadly grip on America’s lawmakers, bought Trump’s silence when they backed him during the election campaign.”3
Piers Morgan
“After Sandy Hook and Las Vegas, what is the rationale for any civilian owning an assault rifle and high capacity magazine?”4
Barbara Streisand
“How long do we let gun violence tear families apart? Enough. Congress & the WH should act now to save lives. There’s no excuse for inaction.”5
Joe Biden, former Vice President
“I’m not an ordained minister; I’m not a theologian, but these guys [NRA] are going to hell.”6
Lily Eskelsen Garcia, sixth grade teacher, Utah, and Vice President National Education Association [NEA] the nation’s largest teacher’s union.
Television news reporters often refer to semiautomatic rifles as “assault weapons,” say guns “go off accidentally,” infer AR15s are capable of full-automatic fire, employ the phrase “gun violence,” and display background screen icons (Browning High Power for example) in reports on violent assaults even when the weapon used was a knife. If journalists are going to bang on authoritatively about something, shouldn’t they know what they’re talking about? Considering network news is for many people their sole source of information, isn’t it important for journalists use proper terminology? Improper use of terms can confuse and mislead the public with respect to laws, regulations, and the types of firearms owned by citizens. I’ve dropped notes to journalists apprising them of proper terms when they used them incorrectly and all responses were cordial. Scott Goldberg of ABC News who incorrectly claimed bump stocks turned semiautomatic rifles into machine guns, refused to respond. Chris, a reporter in the Kansas City news market, agreed that news reports employ biased terminology. He revealed when discussing firearms, incorrect terms are actually provided through press releases issued by Police Public Information Officers relative to a crime under investigation and in scripts written by producers. Journalists are also guided by playbooks listing approved vocabulary that reflect political bias. For example abortion supporters are called “Pro-Choice” even though the choice promoted is abortion and opponents, who call themselves Pro-Life, are instead labeled “Anti-Abortion” or “Anti-Choice” hardly neutral or objective. Chris revealed he was chastised by his boss for saying “illegal alien” instead of the approved term “undocumented immigrant.” Job security enforces compliance.7
Perhaps at no time in American history has the meaning of words mattered more. Consider how for the past 50+ years the Left’s agenda driven political ideology has shaped America. Their control over public education is monolithic, they own pop-culture, the movie, music, and entertainment industries, dominate print and broadcast journalism, influence Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish denominations, and have invaded professional sports. In public education, they write the narrative and point of view allowed to be taught to such a degree, classrooms are little more than indoctrination centers. As a teacher I came up against the Liberal’s hegemonic sway over what kids are taught and their ‘Edstapo’ goons on constant prowl for heretics and dissenters (especially true in SocialIST studies departments). There are ways of being burned at the stake without using fire. Spoon feeding a biased curriculum to an unknowing gullible captive audience is bad enough but perhaps worse is what they leave out. Political Correctness, invented by Stalin,8 dictates what kids are taught on every issue from global warming, immigration, economics, the Constitution, and gender bending, to the meaning of the 2nd Amendment. Not taught the other side? They don’t even know one exists!
For years I’ve warned regardless of how many 2nd Amendment victories are won, America is always a mass shooting and Supreme Court appointments away from losing everything. Fewer Americans than ever today grow up exposed to firearms whether through hunting, target practice, or competition. Their source for information on firearms comes from pop-culture, news and social media, and public education all dominated by liberals hostile to the 2nd Amendment. At some point in their life, an individual is responsible for searching out the truth on any issue. But it doesn’t work that way. Americans are too intellectually lazy to bother. Rather than the rebuke so richly deserved for indolent self-inflicted ignorance, with patience and perseverance the great-unwashed must be educated. Hence this primer. Based on statements in the news and social media, to some degree non-gun owners seem to believe anyone can walk into a gun store, hand over cash, and walk out a few minutes later with a firearm. Is this true?
Only those legally eligible can purchase firearms and only in the state of their residence. Age requirements apply; 18 for rifles and shotguns, 21 for handguns, and they must present a valid drivers’ license. If expired, suspended, revoked, or they moved without updating the address on their license, purchase is denied. Everything is in order, can they now buy a gun? No. They must complete federal form 4473 providing identifying information; name; date and place of birth, social security number, and so forth. Next they’re required to answer a series of questions including who is the actual purchaser of the firearm. Buying it for someone else, a “straw-purchase,” is prohibited. Additional questions include; are they a convicted felon, under felony indictment, a fugitive from justice, drug user, dishonorably discharged from the military, renounced their citizenship, in the country illegally, not a U.S. citizen, subject to a restraining order, or if they have been convicted of domestic violence, misdemeanor or not. A yes answer to these questions means they cannot buy a firearm. An untruthful answer is a felony punishable by federal prison, fines, and loss of the right to own firearms, vote, and hold state or federal jobs…forever. Suppose they lie?
Once form 4473 is completed and signed by a customer, gun stores must call the F.B.I.’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Police agencies and the military are required by law to provide information on prohibited individuals to the F.B.I. who, in turn, enter it into a centralized data base. Upon receiving a request for authorization to sell a gun from a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder, the F.B.I. searches its data base determining if the intended purchaser is not legally prohibited. It’s the F.B.I. who authorizes or denies sales. Suppose a buyer has no criminal record but is mentally unstable? Information on those adjudicated through a legal process as “mentally defective” or having been institutionalized, is also entered into the F.B.I.’s data base and they will be denied purchase. Can’t an FFL just skip all this?
Commercial gun sales can only be made by FFLs. Information on each firearm they receive through purchase, trade, and so forth, must be entered into a logbook along with information as to whom it is ultimately sold. Logbooks are subject to random inspection by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, and Firearms [BATF]. Whether storefront or homebased, FFLs must be able to account for every gun taken in and or sold. Data entry discrepancies may lead to revocation of the FFL and felony prosecution. If the business is sold or closes, logbooks and all 4473 forms are transferred to the BATF, a form of registration. If denied purchase at a gun store, can’t prohibited persons buy firearms at gun shows through some kind of “loophole?”
Gun show promoters lease venues for their events in turn renting space to FFLs, often gun stores. All laws and requirements with respect to buying and selling guns apply at gun shows. Private sales may occur but typically comprise hunting rifles, shotguns and relics. Police officers and AFT Agents are often on hand supervising compliance. Only a miniscule number of criminals purchase firearms at gun shows. Typically they obtain them through burglary and theft. But what about these machine guns we keep hearing about. Can’t anyone walk in and out of a gun store with machine guns?
In 1934, Congress passed the National Firearms Act [NFA] regulating various firearms and devices commonly known as “silencers,” but its main focus was submachine guns, those capable of firing continuously with one pull of the trigger. Submachine guns were not banned. Instead, owners paid a $200 stamp tax and registered the firearm with the federal government.9 The Gun Control Act [GCA] of 1968 was interpreted by the BATF to prohibit the importation of fully automatic firearms by civilians. In 1986, the GCA was amended by the Hughes Amendment (Representative Charles Hughes, Democrat New Jersey) prohibiting civilian possession of full-automatic firearms manufactured after 19 May, 1986. To sell and or purchase firearms covered by the GCA, individuals apply for and obtain a special license from and register the firearm with the federal government paying required fees.10 Title I FFL’s pay a Special Occupation Tax to sell full-automatic firearms. This elevates them to title III hence the common but inaccurate term “class III license.” GCA applicants must meet all legal requirements for ownership, submit to a 6 to 12 month BATF criminal background investigation, provide finger print cards and passport sized photos, pay a $200 stamp tax, and register the firearm with the BATF. Because no full-automatic guns produced after May of 1986 may be sold to civilians, their pool is extremely limited translating into stratospheric prices.11 The idea, as my son says, that “some edgy teenager” can afford one is preposterous. Although not an edgy teenager, add me to the preposterous list.
Yes, the sear portion of an AR, and other semiautomatic rifles, can be cut and modified to allow for full automatic fire. But, there will be no selective fire option. It can now be fired only fully automatic. Anyone caught with such a modified weapon faces 10 years+ in a federal prison, loss of the right to ever be in possession, let alone own, firearms, loss of the right to vote, and hundreds of thousands in fines. May I make a recommendation to anyone considering this modification? Don’t. You will get caught. It’s possible to modify or buy an already modified sear. It’s a small piece of metal and, as long as it’s not installed in a rifle, no problem, right? Wrong. Mere possession of a sear, modified to allow fully automatic fire, is considered the same as possessing a fully automatic rifle with all the same penalties. You will get caught. Once again, don’t do it. If you must fire one, patronize a gun range that rents these rifles. They’re fun but you’ll probably leave realizing how impractical they are for self-defense. Sustained controlled accurate fire? Yeah, sure.
Not every gun owner in America supports let alone belongs to a pro-2nd Amendment organization or gun club, not even close. Nevertheless, when the Left attacks and besmirches these organizations, they serve for liberals as surrogates for all gun-owners and that means you. The Left works off an old and well established ideology and doctrine; the will of the individual must be bent to and subordinated to will of the state. Private ownership of firearms has no place in such a world view and neither do inalienable rights. It’s our job to educate family, friends, and neighbors about the truth because it will not happen in tax payer financed public schools and universities.
22 Emily Zanotti, 2 October 2017, “Insane: The Worst Twitter Responses To The Tragedy in Las Vegas,” The Daily Wire, at www.dailywire.com/news/21/02/10/2017.
55 Alexander Kacala, “From Lady Gaga to Taylor Swift, Celebrities Respond to Yesterday’s Las Vegas Attack,” at http://hornetapp.com/stories/las-vegas-attack/amp/
66 Todd Woodward, Editor, “Downrange: “Teacher, Leave Gun Guys Alone,” Gun Tests 8 (August, 2013), 2. Lily Eskelsen Garcia is the vice president of the National Education Association, America’s largest teacher’s union which is also a major donor and supporter of the Democrat Party. She was speaking before a Netroots Nation Conference attended by 3,000 “progressive activists” leaders in the drive to forge a Leftwing consensus in public education curriculum in the classroom and political activism without.
77 Email from Chris, “AK-47 ‘Assault Rifle,” KCTV 5 News, 6 December, 2007 to the author.
88 Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The VENONA Secrets (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2000), 58.
99 David Higginbotham, “Gun Laws 101: Nations Firearms Act of 1934,” Guns.com at ww.guns.com/2013/01/03,
On average in the past 10 years, ATF has only recommended 44 defendants a year for prosecution on silencer-related violations; of those, only approximately 6 of the defendants had prior felony convictions. Moreover, consistent with this low number of prosecution referrals, silencers are very rarely used in criminal shootings. Given the lack of criminality associated with silencers, it is reasonable to conclude that they should not be viewed as a threat to public safety necessitating NFA classification, and should be considered for reclassification under the GCA.
Suppressors are “rarely used in criminal shootings.” No kidding. Therefore, they aren’t a threat to public safety and shouldn’t be NFA items. I can agree with that.
One of the government’s lawyers brought up the Las Vegas shooting from 2017 as a reason to ban bump stocks. He claimed that the inherent dangerousness of bump stocks necessitated a ban for the sake of “public safety.”
Ooooh. “Public safety.” Because bump stocks are used… Um, how often?
GOA’s attorney countered by telling the judge there is no actual proof of one recorded instance where bump stocks have been used in a crime.
Olson even cited the lack of FBI and ATF statements, studies or reports to demonstrate that there is no conclusive evidence that a bump stock was actually used by the Las Vegas shooter.
I’m sure the DOJ lawyer was quick to set the record straight, and tell the judge all about Mandalay Bay and all the… other… times.
This was something of a “mic drop” moment, because when given the chance to respond, the government’s lawyer could not — in fact, he refused to — counter Olson’s statement on this point.
Since that would have been a heck of a good time to affirmatively state that bump stocks were used (as opposed to being there), the refusal to do so suggests that…
Bump-fire stocks have never been used in a crime, unlike suppressors which are not a threat to public safety.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 4, 2019) — Today, attorneys for Firearms Policy Coalition and Firearms Policy Foundation filed opening briefs in their consolidated appeals with the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the ongoing federal litigation challenging the confiscatory “bump-stock” ban rulemaking by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Copies of the briefs and related filings are available at BumpStockCase.com.
[…]
n the Guedes appeal, FPF argues that the text of the federal statutes at issue in the Final Rule are clear and unambiguous, that the rule of lenity precludes the ATF’s proposed new definition of ‘machinegun’, and that the rule is unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious. The brief also argues that the “district court abused its discretion in finding the statutory language ambiguous and erred as a matter of law in according ATF Chevron deference regarding the terms ‘single function of the trigger’ and ‘automatically’.”
[…]
Appeal is good. Because that ruling is a mess. Friedrich just shot an upright middle finger to the Constitution, statutory law, administrative procedure, physical reality, and sanity. It’s that bad.
The Guedes case and the — previously — separate Codrea challenge were consolidated as Guedes et al. So this ruling is twice as damaging as it might’ve been.
The hours I spent studying hundreds of pages of documentation can be summarized quite briefly.
A preliminary injunction temporarily stopping implementation of the rule is denied.
A preliminary injunction isn’t called for anyway because you can get compensation later… for losing an “unlawful machinegun” for which compensation isn’t offered?
Administrative Procedures Act (APA) required 90 days of commenting, not the 85 we got. Tough shit. Unless you can prove someone definitely would have offered something not presented by another commenter, no harm, no foul. So what if their right to speak was denied?
APA requires a public hearing, which was denied. Tough shit. ATF said no one would have offered anything new (even though FPC/FPF was trying to do just that).
New definitions of old terms. (This will require elaboration below.)
The president can appoint acting-anything regardless of the Constitution and statutory law.
Judge Dabney L. Friedrich is nuts.
In declaring bump-stock-type devices (BSTD) machineguns, the ATF found it necessary to redefine a couple of terms. A machinegun is “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”
While it was long believed that “automatically” referred to the process of chambering, firing, extracting, and reloading, the government’s lawyer, one Eric Soskin, informs us it now means something that “thus allows the ordinary — of the ordinary skill, the ordinary shooter to shoot must [sic] faster.”
“Function of the trigger,” received a similarly crazed reworking. I’ll spare you the pages of argument, but it goes: “function of the trigger” refers to the finger, not the trigger. The government’s definition of machinegun now becomes…
“any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot much faster, without manual reloading, by a single volitional function of the trigger finger.”
With bump-stocks, it no longer matters that the finger engages the trigger and operates it for every shot. Engagement doesn’t count unless the finger itself is intentionally moved to operate that trigger. Volitional movement of other body parts — like the non-trigger hand and arm that move the rifle into the finger — don’t count. They defined the trigger as actually being the finger, or as plaintiff’s attorney Joshua Prince put it:
I think then it becomes the question of whether the person is actually the machine gun, and how are we going to contend with that. Because now if we’re saying for it to operate automatically it has to be the person who actuates it, we’re talking about every single person in the United States and throughout the — through the world as being a machine gun, if that’s the rabbit hole we’re going to go down.
A year ago, I was warning that this made body parts into machineguns, along with anything that can be fired “much faster.” The federal government just went to court and said so. You’re welcome. Please hit my tip jar.
As for pants and rubber bands… that remains to be seen. When all this documentation becomes public, you must read the discussion of rubber bands. When asked if a closet full of semi-auto rifles and a box of rubber bands would be considered by the ATF to be a machinegun, the DOJ lawyer answered:
You know, I think until we — I don’t think we are in a position to come out and give an advisory opinion on what the agency might decide to do with a particular rubber band.
In denying the preliminary injunction, Friedrich found that it was not justified because “the Coalition is unlikely to succeed on these final challenges to the bump stock rule.” She essentially found that the ATF may arbitrarily redefine any word for which Congress neglect to specify a definition (the discussion included “the” and “shall,” and probably should have included “and.”
Friedrich found that federal agencies are not required to follow federal law if they don’t think it would helpful.
And she found that the President can do whatever he wants.
Did I wake up in Maduro’s Venezuela this morning?
I’m sure someone will trot out the old argument that this is Trump’s multidimensional art of the deal. When the ANPRM dropped, it was, “He’s just going to get a bunch of opposed comments so he can say no one really wants this.” When NPRM dropped, it became, “Nah, it a cunning plan to collect comments so the ATF can say they made a mistake and the rule isn’t justified.” When the rule dropped, “His plan is to get this challenged in court so it’ll get tossed as obviously, blatantly illegal.”
Well, it’s in court, and the judge isn’t tossing it. In fact, she says it’s probable that it will stand. And guess who appointed Dabney L. Friedrich, who looks to be upholding the ban, to the DC District Court.
Go ahead, tell me about the dimensional shift to SCOTUS.
Oh, and Friedrich? It’s not “Condrea.”
* That NBC article illustrates just why I will not use that outlet as a source without confirmation. It’s factually wrong on multiple points. The judge did not — yet — uphold the ban. Friedrich did not dismiss the case. And her court is not in Washington state.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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I was cruising the usual gun bloggers for newsletter fodder last week and came across this.
“Expropriation Without Compensation” is Theft
There is no voice of reason. One guy is worried it will stop foreign investment. (Really? Just because you steal things that have been in another’s possession for generations, you think people might be turned off by that?)
When I saw the post title, and knowing that a big expropriation is coming, I initially assumed this was the bump-fire stock ban, in which a minimum of hundreds of thousands of people will theoretically lose anywhere from 280,000 to 520,000 pieces of property to corrupt government acts.
But no.
South Africa is just about set to steal land from white farmers because whites are not allowed in SA anymore. (Almost) South Africa white farmers crisis: This IMPORTANT date could change South Africa FOREVER.
The date in question for South Africa is March 31, 2019, which might add to the confusion, since our ban was formally published in the Federal Register on December 26, 2018. 90 days after that (when the ban proper goes into effect) is March 26, 2019.
Pretty close coincidence. And yes, I do equate the South African and American government thefts. Both establish precedents that the government can take whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and doesn’t even have to make a token payment. In South Africa, it’s farms. In America, it’s toys.
For now. It’s a precedent. What might our benevolent government decide we don’t need next? Yes, a semiauto ban could be on the horizon. But why limit the precedent to firearms?
I will admit that the SA and American thefts differ in a key aspect. The South Africans formally (if rather corruptly) amended their constitution to make their theft “legal.”
In America, the ATF simply (and rather corruptly) wrote a new rule. No amendment, legislation, or rational rationale required. Just language games.
How crazy is it that the South Africans stealing land are paying more lip service to law than the United States?
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The NRA has released a Statement on Bump Fire Stock Rule. Feel free to read it, but I can paraphrase their five paragraphs in a few words:
Don’t blame us. We only wanted regulation under the NFA, registration, taxes, and a ban on new stocks. And our compromise saved us from other bans. Let’s work together.
Wayne LaPierre, or Chris Cox. It’s hard to tell them apart sometimes.
The preemptive surrender monkeys of the NRA asked for the ATF to regulate bump-fire stocks as National Firearms Act items. They asked for this as nearly the entire politico-media industrial complex was saying that bump-fire stocks turn semiautomatic rifles into machineguns.
And just in case it wasn’t clear enough, the NRA told them: “The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.”
What type of NFA item did the NRA think the ATF would call them? I recall when the NRA helped draft a city “assault weapon ban” and similarly claimed they were preventing something worse. It didn’t. And the NRA version even banned SKSs with fixed ten-round magazines.
Capitulating on “bump-fire stocks turn guns into machineguns” before anyone even entered a bill merely signalled to the gun control crowd that they’re fair game, and open season. It told their pet RINOs that they would not be held responsible for human/civil rights infringement. Semiauto ban bills were then entered.
The NRA claims there could have been an amnesty for existing bump-fire stocks, as provided for in the Gun Control Act of 1968, and gives an example from 1981. Apparently they completely forgot their complicity in the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 that completely closed off any possible amnesty for anything built or imported after the May 1986 deadline. (For that matter, the NRA was complicit in the NFA, claiming it would have been worse without them caving on militia grade weapons for militia members.)
If the NRA wanted an amnesty to register existing bump-fire stocks, it had to be through legislation to change the complete ban on new machineguns in FOPA. By going the ATF regulation route, they guaranteed a ban on bumpfire stocks. The Zelman Partisans have been pointing out this problem for months. The NRA didn’t notice until the rule was signed (and the problem of a semi-auto ban because they can be easily converted to “machinegun” with bump-fire stocks, the same way we lost open-bolt semi-autos)?
The NRA told the ATF to regulate these inert chunks of plastic as machineguns, and then act shocked that FOPA applies.
Either the NRA is staffed with complete idiots, or it was just another cunning plan to push rights violations so they could then fundraise to “fight” the rights violation. Or buy Wayne a limo; whichever makes him happier.
“It’s critical that all gun owners unite and prevent the Bloomberg-bought Congress from dismantling our Second Amendment freedom.”
It is critical for all gun owners to unite. Folks, it isn’t your grand dad’s NRA anymore, and it’s too far gone to ever fix and make into whatever you imagine the NRA once was. The NRA has been doing this for more than two decades. I quit the NRA over it in the mid ’90s. It’s past time to tell them you aren’t buying this load of manure anymore.
Take your time, money, and effort to someone who will work for you, instead of the NRA which consistently — NFA, GCA, FOPA, GFSZA, Brady, constitutional carry, ERPOs, bump-fire — works against you and your rights.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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I’m going to be posting another column tonight. This is going to be background material for it.
Some people are defending the NRA’s call for regulating bump-fire stocks under the National Firearms Act; the NRA’s… thinking… being that there could have been an amnesty to grandfather in existing stocks.
An interesting theory. The Gun Control Act of 1968 did allow for amnesty and registration periods.
But then, just 18 years later, we got the Firearms Owners “Protection” Act of 1986.
FOPA flat out slammed the door on registration of “machineguns” manufactured or imported — for civilians — after the May 1986 deadline. The possibility for other NFA items — suppressors, short-barrel firearms, etc. — might still be there. One might even argue that machineguns that had, at some point, been lawfully possessed prior to the ’86 deadline (had been registered, but somehow got improperly transferred) could still get an amnesty.
But nothing manufactured or imported after ’86. Like bump-fire stocks, which suddenly became “machineguns.”
Sorry, NRA. You should have read those laws, in which you are complicit, a little more closely.
I did. In fact, I always read legislation as, “What’s the worst possible interpretation an abusive ATF or administration could make of this?” The NRA should do the same. You aren’t going to be fundraising on your screw-ups forever; folks are getting tired of your backstabbing.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could really use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. And the rabbits need feed. Truck insurance, lest I be forced to sell it. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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