USSC lifts bump stock ban

The line is where the elected branches draw it. You act as if it would be some great societal loss for the government to regulate all the ways people try to get around the restrictions on automatic weapons. I don't consider it a loss.

 

I think the MP5 fires around 800 rounds a minute on its lowest setting and if that’s true about the Vegas shooter he got 70% of the way there.

It seems we should be focused more on the capabilities than technical arguments about how the gun is triggered to fire.

 

Jake Charles, a law professor and Second Amendment scholar, offered an interesting clarification on Twitter. Looking to the law's legislative history, he pointed out that the NRA President convinced Congress to change the definition to the one that ultimately became law, and in doing so, he defined "single function of the trigger" as meaning a "single pull of the trigger."

 

This is the dumbest court case in recent memory, and I don’t even understand why this is being treated as a 2A case. A bump stock isn’t a firearm. How exactly is banning a bump stop infringing on 2A?

@gator_lawyer please help me out here. How is banning an accessory a 2A case? It’s not infringing on anyone’s right to bear the actual rifle.

 

It isn’t being treated as a 2A case. It’s an administrative procedure and statutory interpretation case.

The NFA bans “machineguns” and defines a machinegun as “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.”

ATF insisted for years that a bumpfire stock did not meet the statutory definition of a machinegun so there was nothing they could do about them, then Trump ordered DOJ to ban them after Vegas and ATF reversed course and said nevermind, these are a machinegun and always have been.

This case turned pretty much exclusively on whether guns equipped with bumpfire stocks fire multiple shots automatically by a single function of the trigger.

 

Semantics.

 

No, what I am getting at is I think it is a societal loss if unelected bureaucrats stemming from the executive branch are allowed to go beyond the clear text of the written statutes in enforcing law. In this case, the statute is pretty clear and does not turn on rate of fire. Without further guidance from Congress in the form of an amended law, you are left with what we got with regards to bump stocks where an agency does logical backflips to achieve a desirable outcome. Laws (especially criminal laws) should make sense and be generally unambiguous.

As I said before, they’re not much more than a novelty and I don’t particularly care if congress bans them, nor do I believe they would be viewed as protected even by this Supreme Court.

 

Interesting history. The original proposed definition of a machine gun being something that fires more than 12 rounds without reloading in some ways showcases lawmakers’ ignorance as a bunch of ordinary weapons would have been caught up in that. What’s clear is that they wanted to ban the type of weapons mobsters and criminals like Dillinger and others were using (e.g. Thompson submachine guns and Browning Automatic Rifles) but didn’t really know how to go about articulating it in a relatively well-tailored way.

 

My point is that there are multiple permissive interpretations of the statute. The majority in this case chose a very technical meaning that I don't think reflects the understanding the average person would give it. I think the average person, like the people who drafted the statute, would understand it to mean a single pull of the trigger. So something that isn't a machine gun requires you to pull the trigger each time you fire it.

Of course, we can debate if a rifle with a bump stock even meets that definition. But I think it does. You hold your finger in place, use pressure the initiate the firing, and then it fires continuously as long as you keep your finger in place and the right amount of pressure on the weapon. My point on firing rate is they were trying to regulate weapons that you could fire without having to pull the trigger each time.

You might ask why I am bothered if the majority selected an interpretation of the statute that is a valid one. And this goes back to my view that unless we're dealing with civil liberties, the judiciary shouldn't intervene to overrule an elected branch unless it has clearly exceeded its authority under the Constitution. The thing about regulations is they can be easily reversed via the democratic process.

 

The whole debate is just so stupid. The idiocy masquerading as concern for tyranny or semantics is exhausting.

Meanwhile, the things you find on Twitter

 

Not sure what to take from that comment, but my point was that this is essentially a 2A case.

 

The Second Amendment in action. A member of the militia, acting in self-defense against the demons in his head, was able to resist tyranny at a Michigan splash pad, injuring others before taking his life. What a country.

And in a suburb! Not sure how that works into the narrative of the need to be armed against “urban” types.

ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. — Authorities on Sunday identified the man who opened fire at a splash pad in suburban Detroit before taking his own life, but his motives remained unknown as investigators worked to determine if he left behind any hint of his plans.

Oakland County sheriff’s spokesperson Stephen Huber said the shooter was 42-year-old Michael William Nash of Shelby Township. Sheriff Mike Bouchard said Saturday evening that the gunman had no prior criminal history but apparently suffered privately from what the sheriff called “mental health challenges.”

“It’s our understanding that he was undergoing some mental health challenges, but no one that we know of was notified,” Bouchard said during an evening news conference.

Authorities said Nash drove to suburban Rochester Hills on Saturday and opened fire at a splash pad in a city park around 5 p.m.


Police identify Michigan splash pad shooter
Police identify Michigan splash pad shooter - Tampa Bay Times

 

Except that it wasn't. Neither side argued whether or not bump stocks were actually protected under the second amendment. I suspect they wouldn't be if a law was passed banning them and someone wanted to challenge it. Nor did either side argue the constitutionality of the lesser 2nd amendment-adjacent laws at hand, being the National Firearms Act, the Gun Control Act, or the Hughes Amendment to the Firearms Owners Protection Act.

As @GatorBen pointed out, this was an administrative procedure case challenging whether a government agency exceeded their statutory authority. ATF can regulate (among other things) firearms and certain components specified under the NFA, but generally not accessories that aren't serialized components specified under the text of that act. The question before the court was whether or not bump stocks met the statutory definition of a machine gun as specified by congress and reasonably applied by the ATF, or whether they do not, and thus ATF's enforcement of the law exceeded the scope of their authority.

 

You sure? What is the comparable law that existed around the time of ratification of the Second Amendment that would exist as a historical analog? Don't forget just how stupid the test Bruen created is. And even if we pull back from Bruen to Heller, were bump stocks in "common use"?

 

Well, for something to be protected it would need to qualify as "arms." As an accessory that is not integral in any way to the functioning of the gun in the way a magazine or a trigger is, I don't think the Bruen test, much less the Heller test would even come into effect with this. Heck, that reason is one of the reasons ATF for years refused to regulate bump stocks, as their position was it is an accessory and not a firearm (or an NFA accessory such as an auto sear) and not within the scope of their agency's purview. The court's verdict more or less affirms the original position that a bump stock is an accessory and not an NFA machine gun conversion device without directly saying so.

Couple that with Alito's concurrence, and what you have is a signal, IMO, of the general attitude of the court to an amended law should one be passed.

 

That's an awfully arbitrary line to draw. Wouldn't that argument apply with just as much force to an "extended magazine?"

Don't get me wrong. Drawing arbitrary lines to reach their desired policy outcomes is largely what SCOTUS does. But I'll still criticize the logic when it seems quite twisted.

 

Well, lots of laws, and particularly lots of gun law is incredibly arbitrary so that would kind of fit.

 

That's legislating for you. The difference (to me) is that the people passing the laws (or regulations) are subject to the democratic process. It's why outside of civil liberties, I think the judiciary should be highly deferential to the legislative process, even if the law is very, very stupid.