Last year, Rare Breed Triggers introduced their FRT-15 trigger. It’s an innovative device that helps the user of an AR-pattern firearm to fire rapidly. Specifically, the sear forces a reset of the trigger without the operator having to release finger pressure from the trigger. Thus, you maintain pressure, the trigger resets with each shot, and the continuously applied finger pressure operates the trigger again. Clever.
Clever, until the ATF got around to deciding that bump-fire stocks are machineguns, thanks to the devious way they redefined “function of the trigger” really means operation of the finger.
How can the courts rule that “function of the trigger” means volitional movement of a finger? And yet, they have.
In correspondence with Rare Breed Triggers at the time, I wrote:
“I’ve just watched your Vimeo video about the FRT trigger. I must admit, as I watched the animation explaining the operation, all that went through my head was, “My god, they’ve invented the bump TRIGGER. The ATF is going to go nuts.”
The ATF did.
In the new, Trump-induced way of viewing the finger as a firearm component, the simple fact that you still had to manually operate the trigger, means squat. The ATF has classified the FRT-15 trigger as a machinegun.
I warned that the bump-fire precedent was dangerous. And got laughed at. It’s just about a silly toy that no one needs. It doesn’t have anything to do with my stuff. Folks didn’t want to die on “bump stock hill,” when they could put forth their resources towards more important things.
And bump-fire stocks got banned. Now it’s the FRT-15. I expect binary triggers — triggers that fire the firearm on both the pull and the reset — to be next.
Finally, as was attempted in Nevada, the ATF — having decided that bump-fire stocks, forced reset triggers, binary triggers, drop-in autosears, and lightning links are so simple to install in AR-platform firearms that the entire class is “easily converted into machineguns. Meaning they are machineguns, and So sorry; you didn’t register those machineguns before May 1986, so they’re banned. Turn ’em in or go to prison.
Don’t expect to be offered compensation either. That was another bump-fire precedent. We aren’t going to compensate owners who broke the — newly redefined — law.
I’ve been accused of nitpicking, for worrying about obscure rules, laws, and judicial rulings. This is why I do that.
I have been made a “paper felon” by the simple stroke of a pen several times over. Once you commit one, the rest are easy. Local, state, federal…who cares. I’m now up to falsified federal documentation with my phony CDC jab card. Screw ’em!
I hear when slaves rebel, the masters get their asses kicked and worse. It worked for the Dominicans over the French back in the day. Then those frogs ran here, to the US.
FCKEM…Btches
I watched the video on the trigger, and it functions as a full auto trigger without the full-auto sear. So, what does the law (NFA) say is the exact definition of a full-auto device? Must it have only a full-auto sear to be considered an NFA item? Or is it the function of what appears to be the necessary single trigger pull for multiple rounds to become NFA? The devil is in the details. And the details are what will get the BATFE to either rule the day they made the decision, or rue the day.
26 U.S. Code § 5845(b)Machinegun
The term “machinegun” means 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. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.
The bold text is what the ATF redefined with the bump-fire stock rule. From “function of the trigger” to “volitional movement of the finger.”
Then that is where the law suits need to press on the issue. Thank you for clarifying. If they are walking around the law as published by Congress then they are the one’s breaking the law. “Function”, hmmm, yeah I can see how they could misconstrue that to mean what they want it to mean. Not that its right, legal precedent I suspect would be the deciding factor here.
You’d have to ask Rare Breed how they’ll handle this, but the bump-fire stock lawsuits usually (taking the Firearm Policy Coalition suits* as examples) boil down to:
1. The ATF’s rule contradicts law as passed by Congress.
2. The ATF unconstitutionally usurped legislative authority to re-write law.
3. The ATF has repeatedly contradicted itself on bump-fire stocks.
4. The ATF violated the Administrative Procedures Act by screwing up the commenting process, and by unlawfully denying a public hearing on the proposed rule.
Too many judges are — improperly — granting the ATF Chevron deference and basically saying, “The ATF can do whatever they want.”
(*Nota bene: I am cited in several of their suits, and could, theoretically if highly unlikely, be called to testify.)