High court to look at bump stock ban

They'll go the opposite direction.

 

That damned Trump. Banning bump stocks and shit.

 

The issue here isn’t whether a bump stock ban is or is not good policy, it’s about whether ATF’s regulations impermissibly change statutory law and a number of other related sort of admin law nerd issues.

The long and short of it is that ATF, for over a decade, consistently issued guidance letters saying (likely correctly based on how they work) that a bump stock does not meet the statutory definition of a machine gun and as such was legal and could be legally sold.

After the Vegas shooting Trump directed the DOJ to find a way to ban them. ATF responded by saying turns out we’ve been interpreting the statutory machine gun definition incorrectly for the entire time the statute has been in existence, here’s a new rule to “clarify” what it actually means, based on this new clarification it turns out we were wrong and bump stocks have actually been illegal machine guns all along, all of our guidance letters saying that they are legal are useless, everyone needs to turn them in / destroy them or else you’re committing the federal felony of owning an unregistered machine gun, and we don’t have any power to make this ruling prospective only because the machine gun ban makes it illegal for a non-licensee to own any machine gun that wasn’t on the NFA registry prior to 1986 which obviously none of these were.

 

Bump stocks and one dude didn't kill 60. That was a concerted terror attack with multiple angles of fire with fully automatic gunfire going cyclic. There was fire from above AND fire from the ground. All you have to do is listen to the few videos of the incident that remain on Youtube, if you can find them.

I'm not jumping into the bump stock argument - because its about the ATF changing definitions laid out by Congress.

 

I don’t see any reason for high capacity magazines or bump stocks. I’m an avid hunter and neither has a use.

 

One shooter. There is no proof there were multiple.

 

Not going to get into the multiple shooter conspiracy, but are you suggesting that one shooter with a bump stock wasn’t enough to kill 60 people? I’m not some type of Green Beret or Navy Seal… just a standard issue trooper, but I could easily see 60 being killed with an AR-15 with just semiautomatic fire if shooting into a crowd that large. You don’t even need the bump stock to do that. Definitely don’t need multiple shooters.

 

This is the same course as SBR's/pistol braces, correct? Or the Auto Key Card? I've been following loosely and the biggest complaint I see is basically what you wrote.

This is related to Chevron deference? I didn't know what that was until a recent Too Hot post, but it sounds like it with regards to the ATF changing their minds on what classifications are what, despite not change in congress' statutory language?

Sorry, I'm a legal layman.

 

This. The statute does not turn on the rate of fire of a weapon. It turns on being able to fire multiple rounds with a single function of the trigger. A bump stock still requires the trigger to be pulled for each round, it just harnesses the inertia of the weapon to make it easier to do so in a more rapid fashion.

FWIW, I don't own one, never did, and think they are fairly useless novelties. That said, if congress wants them banned, they should write a statute to do so. Under either the plain language of the NFA or the rule of lenity, you really can't reach a logical conclusion that a federal agency can ban them.

 

It’s a relatively similar issue to the SBR/brace rule one (that is also an ATF rule purporting to “clarify” the statutory definition of an SBR with ATF flip-flopping positions). The autokeycard case is likely a bit different since, from my understanding, that one more turns on the factual determination of whether the item is a machine gun conversion part (there’s not any dispute as to whether, when used, it functions as a machine gun - assuming one could actually make it usable it would be a lightning link which absolutely is creating automatic fire).

It is related to Chevron deference, although this case presents some narrower potential grounds for ruling than just reversing Chevron altogether. Because interpretation of this statute has direct criminal law implications, there’s the question of whether the rule of lenity (that, when a criminal statute is ambiguous, courts should interpret it against the government in the manner most favorable to the defendant) would trump any deference that may otherwise be owed to ATF.

 

There are some consistent themes with SBRs and pistol braces of the ATF saying something is legal for years and then doubling back on it. They've gotten smacked down federally and enjoined nationwide already on the pistol brace issue. It may eventually make its way higher, and Cargill may have some bearing on it. The auto key card case is just mind boggling. Suffice it to say the defendants were railroaded in that one, but has about as much in common with this case as the auto key card has with a functioning lightning link.

This isn't really related to Chevron because Chevron doesn't apply to criminal statutes. It's really plain language interpretation and the rule of lenity. Both the plaintiff and the government argue that the statute is clear but they reach different conclusions about what it says. The plaintiff argues that even if it weren't clear, the rule of lenity applies and must result in the statute being construed in the most favorable way to a defendent. The government argues that lenity does not apply because the statute is not grievously ambiguous.

 

I'm not suggesting he couldn't. I'm saying listening to the audio that surfaced in the days following the event, it was obvious there were more than one shooter. Those videos no longer exist on Youtube.

 

You would rely on audio from a no longer existing Youtube video over eye witness accounts and forensic evidence? I've just about had it with conspiracy theory culture. smh

 

Listening to this argument, I don’t think there’s a coherent explanation for why ATF thinks a bump stock is a machine gun, but unassisted bump firing or using a rubber band to bump fire is not a machine gun.

They have to take the position that they aren’t (if you don’t, it almost necessarily makes every semi-automatic weapon a machine gun, and there’s no way the court is going to buy into the idea that every single legal semi-automatic weapon might also be an illegal machine gun), but there’s not really a satisfying explanation for why that’s the case.

 

The out Justice Jackson is trying to offer - that “function” doesn’t refer to anything that the trigger does, or anything that anyone is doing to the trigger, but instead means the purpose of the trigger (shooting bullets) - doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

It ought to be telling that even the government won’t agree with her, but she keeps pushing it.

 

What's your definition of a "high capacity" magazine?

 

Cool. The second amendment is not about hunting.

 

No possibility of the sounds being echos?

 

“Standard issue trooper”? What is that?