short-barrel rifles | The Zelman Partisans

Connecticut Dimwit Senator Chris Murphy. Of course.

America a crying out for Congress to do something about mass shootings. So what is Senate Republicans’ answer? To force a vote today on a resolution that would legalize a class of assault weapons that have been banned for 100 years.

I’m heading to the Senate floor to oppose it.

Breitbart’s AWR Hawkins was a bit confused by Murphy’s tweet.

It is difficult to decipher Murphy’s tweet, as the Republican effort to block the ATF is about protecting guns with stabilizer braces that were legal to own without registration up until June 1, 2023.

What really confused him is that Murphy is simply dumber than a box of rocks.

Republicans were attempting to legislatively block the ATF’s pistol brace rule. That nonlegislative law-making declared braced pistols to be short-barrel rifles. Murphy, being stupid and ignorant — and apparently surrounded by equally incompetent staffers who couldn’t set him straight — seems to think short-barrel rifles are banned. They are not. Not even in Connecticut.

SBRs are regulated under the National Firearms Act; requiring the payment of a tax to lawfully possess. Murphy, had he two neurons to rub together, might have noticed that the ATF’s new, unconstitutional rule allowed a grace period for braced pistol owners to register their magically-turned-into-rifles pistols. I assume this regulation is what the idiot mistook for a ban.

Digression: I wouldn’t blame anyone who decided to use the ATF’s “amnesty” to register. It’s not a bad deal, given the regulatory environment we’re stuck with for now. But not for the reason the ATF thinks.

The ATF waived the registration tax. So you could register your braced pistol for free. And now that it’s a short-barrel rifle…

…you equip it with a real stock, and the barrel length of your choice. And now you have a real SBR ready to go, no charge. Transferable.

End digression

Possibly Hawkins was also confused by Murphy’s claim that this “ban” happened 100 years ago. Here’s a hint for the Connecticut cluck: the regualtion is through the National Firearms Act of 1934. That would be 89 years ago (minus a few days, as I type this); not 100.

Hawkins’ column mentions that these pistols were perfectly legal prior to the ATF arrogating Congress’ authority. And that raises an interesting point about the NFA and SBRs.

SBRs were regulated because Congress of the time considered them dangerously concealable. But pistols are even more concealable, yet not NFA regulated. The difference was how powerful a cut-down rifle is compared to a typical handgun. So there were really two factors that determined an SBR: barrel length and power.

But what was a pistol last month, and is now a rifle, still fires the same round. The brace doesn’t make it more powerful. It’s the same blasted gun.

I’d argue that this is one more indicator that the brace rule violates Congress’ intent. That might be an extra point to be raised in lawsuits challenging the rule.

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Trump spoke at the NRA’s annual meeting.

Reminding gun owners what he did for the protection of the Second Amendment and pledging to do much more, former President Donald Trump closed the National Rifle Association’s main event Friday with a stemwinder that brought the crowd to its feet.

What he did for 2A protection? Lessee…

He did roll back a bizarre interpretation of 3D printer files as munitions (something that report falsely characterizes as “banning 3D-printed guns”). And he reversed the VA’s blatantly unconstitutional and illegal reporting of people to NICS. I’ll give him those.

On the other hand, he also signed Fix NICS, prompting states to arbitrarily convert more people into prohibited persons and felons.

And there was that Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals appointee who thinks, “the Second Amendment has no application to state laws.” What could possibly go wrong?

Even more damaging, he magically turned inert pieces plastic into machineguns, by executive fiat. That did more damage to 2A-protected rights than any Dim president had managed in decades. Estimates vary, but turned tens to hundreds of thousands of people into unindicted felons. And more than a few indicted and convicted.

Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool. Well, Trump did used to be a Dimocrat.

He established the precedent that federal bureaucrats are free to redefine words at will, without enabling legislation, to call any damned thing they want “machineguns.” And the ATF immediately ran with it; they live for this… excrement.

The Rare Breed Triggers FRT-15 trigger group, which requires the trigger be pulled for each round fired, suddenly became a “machinegun,” by using the exact same “logic” of “operation of operation of the trigger” really meaning “volitional movement of the finger. Oops; more newly-minted felons.

On a roll with redefining words, they came for pictures. Yep, thanks to Trump’s precedent, the ATF decided that line drawings of unassembled pieces of lightning links really are machineguns. A couple of folks are on trial for that even now, including a guy who let people run ads for the Auto Keycard, but never even sold them himself.

The Trump precedential damage continued with braced pistols becoming short-barrel rifles, after they specifically were not. But at least they gave you the options of begging permission to pay for the privilege of keeping them, or self-incriminating and hoping they’d make an exception for you. More felons.

And he’s “pledging to do much more?” While didn’t act on them before, Trump has supported no-due process red flag orders, raising the age to buy any firearm to 21, and an “assault weapon” ban. Is that the “more” he’s promising? If the Dims were paying attention, they’d nominate Trump themselves over Xiden.

On the bright side, Trump’s Supreme Court picks might… might eventually repair the damage he did to the Second Amendment. But his actions will still cost us millions of dollars in legal expenses, endless man hours, and hard work — not to mention the harm done to plaintiffs and improperly charged defendants — to get the Court to reverse him. (And note that the brilliant BRUEN decision was not written by a Trump appointee.)

If it were just his SCOTUS picks, economic work, and the incredible Abraham Accords, I’d be happy to see Trump elected again. But the man has zero impulse control on Second Amendment issues; he can demonstrably be panicked into rash action by any high profile incident.

And we have to live with his impulses.