The Republicans get away with so much despicable action and each time the Dems get pants by the audacity of the attempt. That’s how we are here now.
The conservatives will try absolutely anything, up to and including armed insurrection. Now with AR15s, and probably with bumpstocks fitted.
Don’t think that it could never happen. The MAGA element love being underestimated.
So, I work in a gun store(part time), if you think bump stocks are unethical, look up(or don’t) a binary trigger. Those, as far as I know, have never been banned, and are far more effective when it comes to trying to attempt to increase fire rate.
To be honest, a lot of gun legislation is really ineffective. The amount of loopholes etc, are kinda insane. If we’re going to talk about gun legislation, it needs to be a helluva lot more than a part ban on “assault style” firearms, until then, it’s just pandering for votes imo.
(Please don’t assume I am a crazy arsenal wielding person. I actually don’t own any firearms at this moment despite my part time occupation.)
I actually looked up the legalisation one time. Congress described a machine gun and gave all the definitions that were forbidden to alter it to make it automatic fire. It was pretty comprehensive, particularly given that it was written in the 80s. However this supreme court said that the magic words ‘bump stock’ wasn’t in the legalisation. Words that didn’t even exist until 2003, or thereabouts. The court ignored the legislative text completely.
And I don’t believe that you are a gun nut at all. You seem perfectly reasonable and make a good point.
However this supreme court said that the magic words ‘bump stock’ wasn’t in the legalisation. Words that didn’t even exist until 2003, or thereabouts. The court ignored the legislative text completely.
This is the text of the NFA that has defined what is a machine gun since 1934:
The term “machine gun” 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.
I’m not a fan of this SCOTUS, but the bump stock ruling was inline with decades of jurisprudence on the topic and the final opinion was fairly unsurprising as a result. It was honestly less of a gun law ruling and more of an executive regulatory procedure one.
A bump stock does not function by a single action of the trigger and does not meet the statutory definition as a result. The ATF rule banning them got struck down because Congress hadn’t authorized the ATF to regulate machine guns beyond that specific statutory definition.
Bump stocks are no more a machine gun than a Gatling gun is under the definition that has existed for nearly a century, and the legal status of the latter has been extremely clear for a very, very long time.
If the goal is to treat them as a regulated item, then Congress needs to pass legislation with language that covers them because saying it was already there is simply incorrect. There is a specificity to the language of the NFA that doesn’t cover any number of mechanisms. It’s been a deficiency of the law since 1934.
If you want to fix that, that first requires understanding exactly what needs fixing.
However this supreme court said that the magic words ‘bump stock’ wasn’t in the legalisation.
A bump stock doesn’t make a gun automatic fire, therefore a prohibition on modifications to make a gun automatic fire does not include it. It’s a basic “the law says what it says, you don’t get to add things you don’t like and call them close enough” argument. It’s not about the words “bump stock”, but that the law prohibits modifications to make a gun automatic and a bump stock does not make a gun automatic, it merely makes a method for firing a semiautomatic gun faster easier to achieve.
Bump firing is basically using the recoil from a shot to bounce your finger off the trigger and then pull the trigger again, which increases the rate of fire. It’s even less accurate than automatic fire (because of the way the gun has to literally bounce around), and not quite as fast (but pretty close). You can do it without a bump stock, but it’s easier to achieve, more accurate and more comfortable to do with one. The fact that when bump firing you only fire a single round for each function of the trigger makes it not automatic by definition.
The binary triggers mentioned earlier in the thread are basically triggers that will fire both when the trigger is pulled and when it is released, which hypothetically doubles the firing rate of a semiautomatic weapon by not requiring you to release the trigger and pull it again to fire another round. Binary triggers basically come down to an argument of what counts as an “function of the trigger” and whether both pulling and releasing the trigger can count as separate functions of the trigger - if they can then it’s not automatic, if they cannot then it is.
I tend to agree. There’s already too many firearms out there (more guns than people) so it won’t be all that effective in the short term.
But I think it’s more of a thing that will take generations for there to be a change. And yeah it’s pandering for votes, but it’s also about opening up conversation, which is a step in the direction of a cultural change. A cultural shift away from buying guns for paranoid reasons about protection from “those people” back towards guns being used for hobbies like hunting and target shooting won’t be easy to accomplish. But gotta start somewhere.
Just be aware that our military is here to protect the constitution.
Meal team 6 ain’t about that life. Not even their Dale Gribbliest. It’s going to be a horrible mistake. Fool me once…
I guess my point is not that they’ll necessarily be successful, it’s more that a great many good people won’t go home to their families that night.
They weren’t successful last time and the Republican Congress welcomed the traitor-in-chief back to DC last week as a hero.
Are they good people if they’re taking part in an armed insurrection? What do they think will happen going against the government like that? The government will drop soap bubbles on them? I mean come on how low IQ are they now? I’ve heard we have gay bombs maybe we have straight bombs we can drop on them because they like the orange man a little too much.
Democrats like to bitch about Republicans but their platforms are 95% the same. The real enemy is leftists, and they’ll take Trump for 4 terms before they ever give an inch to the left.
their platforms are 95% the same.
Economically, yes, but socially, no. That social part matters quite a bit.
Social policies have only been made to matter to create an illusion of two parties. In 1973 Republican and Democratic voters were equally likely to say abortion should be legal.
The US is a corporatocracy and business cares nothing about social matters. Their lobbying efforts fund both sides to ensure that the economic laws meet big business goals no matter who wins.
Ehhhhh it matters less than dems want us to think. Social policy doesn’t matter if nobody can make endsmeat. The social policy of dems is just the other wing of our singular corporate party providing the illusion of choice.
Christofascism or fascism with a pride flag, either way we funnel more of our wealth to the 1% and further disenfranchise everybody else.