In keeping with April First traditions of foolery, the DC Court of Appeals denied the Guedes et al appeal for a stay on the bump-fire ban.

It is 86 pages of legalese, which you may read at your leisure. Much of it addresses the legal aspects of Whitaker’s signing the rule, and administrative issues raised. The meat that I believe most TZP readers want to see boils down to this statement.

But the Rule reasonably distinguishes binary-trigger guns on the ground that they require a second act of volition with the trigger finger. The release of a trigger is a volitional motion. But merely holding the trigger finger stationary—which is what operation of a bump stock entails—is not.

Volitionally operating your finger counts. Volitionally operating your entire off hand and arm does not. Thus, inert hunks of plastic are machineguns. As is any light-trigger firearm which might be fired with an involuntary and nonvolitional muscle twitch, or sympathetic squeeze. Essentially, any unintended — nonvolitional –discharge proves your firearm to be a machinegun.

Equally infuriating, and more dangerous, is the way they dismissed all arguments against the ATF simply redefining words and changing intent. That’s peachy. Law no longer means anything whatsoever except what an unelected bureaucrat says it does, and is subject to arbitrary change. Your broken down Trabant can be a main battle tank. Better start your NFA paperwork.

There is no law.

There is no constitution.

You’ll also love the part where the lunatics in black dresses (which I hope come standard with built-in straitjackets) find that retroactively declaring bump-fire stocks to be machineguns is not a retroactive action. The Queen would be envious of their reality-denial skills.

The one glimmer of sanity is found in the dissent by Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson.

“Unlike my colleagues, I believe the Bump Stock Rule does contradict the statutory definition and, respectfully, part company with them on this issue.”

And for good reasons. Sane and logical reasons. This is the first time I’ve seen a judge diagram a sentence in a ruling.

For the reasons detailed supra, I believe the Bump Stock Rule expands the statutory definition of “machinegun” and is therefore ultra vires. In my view, the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their challenge and I would grant them preliminary injunctive relief.

Sadly, every other judge who has ruled on a bump-fire stock case to date believes otherwise. Even the majority (possibly unanimous, as no dissent was listed) of the Supreme Court saw no need to stay the ban. I am not optimistic as to the final outcome.

Of the case(s), or the country.

I fear the oathbreaking majority idiots have moved us another day closer to Open Season.

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]