I don’t really have a strong opinion about the bump stock ban either way. I think that they are goofy items and frankly I have other issues that ping my outrage meter more. However, looking into it, I don’t see how the BATFE can outlaw them by saying that they are machine guns. Federal law defines a machine gun as:
Bump stocks do not allow fire with a “single function of the trigger.” In case you are unaware, a bump stock recoils forward upon an initial firing causing the entire rifle to lurch forward, pressing the trigger against the firers finger causing the trigger to engage again (and again and again) causing multiple functions of the trigger. This is what the Obama Administration ruled in 2014 and they almost had to.
Now Trump, that friend of gun owners, has ruled that since you only intentionally press the trigger once, that is a “single function of the trigger.” That’s complete horseshit and ignores the text of the law. The law does not say a single function of the finger.
I’m not trying to start a gun control debate or a Trump debate, but the Executive just cannot rewrite a law because someone has found a workaround. That is up to Congress.
Am I missing something obvious? Has Trump enacted a ban that he knows will obviously and clearly fail in court?
You pull the trigger once. You then hold the finger in position while the mechanism uses the finger as a activator.
(Sorry, I don’t know any obfuscating legalese)
The whole point of a bump stock is an end run around the machine gun ban.
There have been cases of homerigged solutions that have been ruled to be a conversion to a machine gun.
Bumpfiring is legal as it involves no modification or added parts and the shooter pulls the gun into the finger which I imagine is considered a manipulation of the trigger for each shot.
It could be just a matter of “hey, I said do something, find out something I *can *do, worry about what comes after, after”. That fits his temperament.
But considering the policy aspect: passing it through *regulation *eases pressure for it to be actually legislated in the short term with the inherent opening of debate on other things about guns people want regulated or deregulated, which is why the administration got cover right up front from the NRA itself announcing it favored restricting the devices through the administrative regulation route rather than risk opening the can of worms about legislating. If they in turn did so because they felt that then its legality could be fought over when the Vegas incident went cold from passing time, would be a matter of speculation.
The ATF “clarified” (their wording) the definition of a machine gun to include words to the effect that the single trigger pull starts a chain of action that results in automatic fire. So I guess this did not need any extensive legislation, just that “clarification”.
Their own rule misstates the process, but it admits that the trigger “resets.” If the trigger resets, by definition, it must “function” again for an additional round to fire. It is not a “single function” of the trigger.
I mean, the lefties in the Obama administration saw this clear meaning. This will not stand in court.
You’re not missing it. As much as I wish the law said “a single pull on the trigger”, it does not.
I will conspicuously not address the question of whether Trump knew or cared whether the ban is legal, or whether we can expect pro-Trump gun owners to rabidly militate on this encroachment on their rights, as they did in the Clinton and Obama years.
In the internal mechanisms of guns, there are semi-automatic guns that fire once for each pull of the trigger, and there are full-automatic guns that fire continuously as long as the trigger is pulled down (the way an actual machine gun fires, although we’re talking about rifles here)
That’s what the laws as written are trying to distinguish between. Bump stocks and those little crank gizmos are clearly attempts to circumvent the letter of the law- they’re external devices that technically DO pull the trigger once for each round fired.
I’d think there’d be a lot of room for “spirit of the law” type interpretations- these things are clearly meant to take advantage of the wording of the law as written.
That’s why we have courts, but I wish the law specified “one manual pull of the trigger”. (IANAL, perhaps there’s better verbiage, but we all know what we want to get at here).
Full-auto is never about accuracy. It’s about making it less appealing to put your body into certain designated areas. Of course, add the element of surprise, and there’s a lot of killing to be had.
The “spirit” or “intent” of the law is only supposed to apply if the text is ambiguous. As I look at it, the text is clearly not ambiguous.
The focus of the words is on the functionality of the trigger, not the person firing the weapon. When you ask yourself, “Does the trigger function once or more than once?” then you have the answer to the question.
The need to update laws for new technology is nothing new, and there is no reason this shouldn’t have been presented to Congress. I’m sure there are the votes to pass this.
It is the very same one I cited in the OP. Here is the new rule:
They do their best to say that a “single function” of a trigger is equivalent to a “single pull” of a trigger but it is hamfisted at best. Nothing in the statute requires each trigger function to be purposefully or manually initiated. If it only discharges a single round with each “function” of the trigger, not the shooter, the trigger, then it does not meet the definition of a machine gun under the law.
I can’t help but be reminded of all those Westerns in which the gunslinger holds the trigger of his revolver and fans the hammer to fire rapidly (but accurately). Mattel even made the “Fanner 50” toy revolver to allow all of us kids to do the same thing.
It’s sounding to me like this would make those revolvers automatic weapons, since there’s no separate pull of the trigger after each shot is fired.
sigh * Trump didn’t know “bump stocks” were a gun thing. He thought it was a Wall Street thing, and since he didn’t own any bump stocks, he figured why not let them be banned–no skin off his nose. And that’s how bump stocks got banned.
Because someone wants one and its legal. Maybe. TBD later. And since the idea of a ban was floated hundreds of thousands have been sold. Its like the standard argument about why we don’t totally ban lots of things.
Personally I have no interest in one and even with the press they got before the Vegas and proposed bans I don’t know of anyone at our gun club who had one. Zero out of maybe 2k members. But after the first talk of bans you couldn’t keep one in stock and now on our rifle range they are almost common; more so than either my Krag or Mausers. Especially once our Mayor floated his own new-and-improved assault rifle ban. Best marketing the companies that make them could dream of.
In other words this one could get real interesting.