I wrote last week about the seemingly virtually nonexistent bump-fire ban compliance rate. A commenter spoke at some length on why people aren’t complying. I think he is overly optimistic.
“…99.997% who are well aware of the blatant abuse this nonsense is and will continue to be, not to mention its wholesale uncontsitutionality, and putting their nickel on “the ban can’t stand”,”
Judging by reactions I get, I doubt the number of sensible people is anywhere near 99%. Take this recent comment regarding my compliance rate column:
“I would say this, if I owned a bumpstock. you can have it.. And no, I wan’t no reason to waste ammo. I do not own one. I have belt loops on my pants. Bump stocks be damned. IT WAS JUST A GIMMICK. Let it fade. I like people, the nut job in Vegas, not so much. Think about that, Las Vegas, and there might be a nut job in the mix. Where will I vacation next?”
.
After a year and a half of discussion that person still doesn’t get it. “Let it fade,” and you let all law fade, and we live by royal whim, imperial fiat. “Stroke of the pen” and all that entails.
Nor should anyone who has been paying attention to the courts assume “the ban can’t stand.” Not just the courts hearing the bump-fire cases, which have uniformly stated that the plaintiffs (our side) are unlikely to succeed (with one lone dissent), but other cases: courts finding it unlawful to follow the law as written because a previous president chose to ignore the law, Portland protestors shutting down interstate (and international) coal traffic as the authorities refuse to do anything about it. A judge who found pipeline protestors innocent: “not responsible by reason of necessity”.
The ban well may stand.
“Anyone determined enough to protect his investment AND his rights will have had six months to think and plan slowluy acquire the necessities to ferret their hunk of plastic away somewhere safe and impossible to find.”
Maybe. But how many folks who assumed it would never happen bothered to plan?
“Soom enough BATF will have at least as much egg on their mugs”
Egg in their beer is looking more likely, considering that the DC Appeals court made arguments for the ATF, claims even the feds declined to make, to rationalize upholding the ban.
“HOW can the government of one state order private entities in another state and tell them what they may/mayn’t DO…” the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution prohibits that.
How can the courts rule that “function of the trigger” means volitional movement of a finger? And yet, they have. But I’ll give you a hint how that can happen, although I don’t know if this has been raised in the bizarre NJ case: constructive possession; a California prosecutor could argue that a standard capacity magazine shipped to California remains in the constructive possession of the shipper until it is delivered to the purchaser. Thus, the shipper “possessed” the arbitrarily-unlawful magazine in California, and is subject to their law. Take one look at the Ninth Circus and tell — with a straight face — that they would not buy that legal contortion.
Or the Supreme Court. Remember, these are the judicial gymnasts who, for eighty years, have upheld the National Firearms Act on the grounds that such items can be regulated because they are not militarily useful, but that machineguns can be regulated because they are.
“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.”
Overturning the bump-fire ban is not a slam dunk in an age where the laws is whatever the government says it is today. And remember that the ATF and Courts are both parts of that government.
We are fighting lunatics and liars — DOJ attorneys like Eric Soskin and judges alike — who matter-of-factly state that fingers are triggers, and the only difference between a machinegun and a semi-auto is whether the finger is moved volitionally. (Which, coupled with the concept that a select-fire trigger group is a machinegun itself, makes your finger one such if you are moving it.)
That fight will be long and hard. And expensive. Two of the major groups leading the challenges to the ban are the Firearms Policy Coalition and Gun Owners of America. They can use your support in this.
Donate to Firearms Policy Coalition (and enter to win a SIG P320)
(Other groups and individuals raising money to fight the ban can drop a link in comments, and I’ll update this list to include you.)
[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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I joined GOA quite awhile ago. While I had struggled with joining the NRA again, the GOA was easy. They are the only no compromise group out there, fighting the fight from the place where people who actually have some skin in the gun rights game are at. They don’t make deals with the devil, they argue from the constitution and the law, and don’t get sidetracked with making sure that their leaders get paid millions more every year.