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.
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.
So much twaddle and dancing around definitions. You could definitely qualify for a spot on Trump’s Supreme Court.
All they are a modification to turn a semiautomatic gun into a full automatic weapon. That’s it. All the intricate dribble into the contrary doesn’t change that. Water is wet, sky blue, and modifications allowing automatic fire are machine guns.
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.
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.
They had several cases along these lines involving several agencies, and I feel like people don’t understand the underlying legal idea - rule making power belongs to Congress. Federal agencies under the executive branch that have rule making powers receive those powers by Congress delegating it to them in a limited fashion through legislation. Those powers extend only so far as the passed legislation delegates them and no further. Even in cases where it seems like it would be useful, or the name of the agency suggests it would be something in their sphere of influence.
That excellent quote of the text you provided spells out that any modifications to a gun that allows any more than a single shot is to be prohibited. A court that is very big on textual meaning, as it purports to be, would readily agree, unless bias is in the driver’s seat.
This conservative supreme court despised regulatory agencies . For decades the US government has relied upon such agencies as subject experts and has allowed them to regulate their areas. This court just wants to reverse this common sense and established way of doing things. I might remind you that the bump stock thing wasn’t a democrat initiative, but a bipartisan Trump one.
For a non-american, non-knowledgeable on gun person, I’ve seen the bump stock discussion a few times this week.
Why is it a discussion? What difference does a bumpstock do?
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.
