Category: Cops
Bump stocks are now legal! (Photo: Slidefire)
In a 6-3 decision on Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that semiautomatic rifles with bump stocks aren’t machine guns.
The court said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) overstepped by classifying them as such. The case, Garland v. Cargill, represents a huge win for the 2A community.
Alan M. Gottlieb, the founder and Executive Vice President of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), praised the decision.
“This is a significant victory for gun owners because it reminds the ATF it simply cannot rewrite federal law,” said Gottlieb. “The agency has just been reminded that it can only enforce the law, not usurp the authority of Congress.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, clarified:
We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’ And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically.’ ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns.
The ruling highlighted that for many years, the ATF didn’t consider bump stocks to make rifles machine guns.
This stance changed after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, leading the ATF to demand bump stock owners surrender or destroy their devices within 90 days.
SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, who challenged the ATF’s rule in 2018, said, “ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a rule that was logically inconsistent with the plain text of the statute and cut into the prerogative of Congress.”
“As the executive branch has continued to use ATF to implement its will and circumvent congressional authority, we are optimistic that today’s decision will send a message that such actions will not be tolerated and that the courts will strike down more regulations inconsistent with the law as Congress wrote,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control organization funded by Michael Bloomberg, was irate with the ruling.
“Guns outfitted with bump stocks fire like machine guns, they kill like machine guns, and they should be banned like machine guns — but the Supreme Court just decided to put these deadly devices back on the market,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown.
“We urge Congress to right this wrong and pass bipartisan legislation banning bump stocks, which are accessories of war that have no place in our communities,” he added.
Well, there’s no doubt that anti-gun Democrats will move to ban bump stocks following SCOTUS’ decision. The question is whether they’ll have enough support across the aisle to make it law.
Categories
AG Garland Says Quiet Part Out Loud!
Chicago police officers investigate a shooting on Thursday, May 30, 2013. (Photo by Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
I dream of one day getting a government grant to investigate why drivers in black cars are always the last to turn their headlights on. For a couple million of U.S. money, I’d happily sit in a lawn chair with a clipboard and yellow pad beside the Interstate, and tick off the colors of the cars that are still running unlighted well after dusk. Then I’d construct impressive Excel spreadsheets and use those to generate attractive tables and graphs. With proper funding, I could make that project last for years.
I was reminded of my idea by a recent piece in the Washington Post that detailed a study by Andrew V. Papachristos, an associate professor of sociology at Yale University. Papachristos studied murders in Chicago and discovered if you spend a lot of time around criminals, you’re a lot more likely to be shot. Who’da thunk?
As Papachristos reported: “More than 40 percent of all gun homicides in the study occurred within a network of 3,100 people, roughly 4 percent of the community’s population. Simply being among the 4 percent increased a person’s odds of being killed by a gun by 900 percent.”
Now I know you’re thinking this just proves hoary old maxims like “lie down with dogs, come up with fleas,” and it is true that this is yet another example of university research expending lots of time and money to prove something we all know to be the case.
But it is very useful in the current context. The antis are saying that our division of society into good and bad people is unrealistic and — of course — racist. They argue there is no such thing as a good person, and no one — whether Nobel laureate or gangbanger — is really to be trusted with a gun. Conversely, they argue there are no bad people, just people in bad circumstances.
Well, Prof. Papachristos apparently has demonstrated the opposite. There are those in the world who are bad people. If you are one of their friends or neighbors, you are likely to catch a bullet, whether intentionally or by accident. The obvious answer to the problem? Remove bad people from society. If you can by some alchemy make them into good people, by all means do. If not, sequester them far from the rest of us.
Knowing that requires no affiliation with Yale, but it’s always good to see elite academics stumble into the truth.