This Ain't it Chief
President Trump’s Bump Stock Ban Will Be Rightfully Ruled Unconstitutional.
In February of this year, President Donald Trump announced that he signed a memorandum directing the US DOJ to ban accessories that turned “legal weapons into machine guns.” This reactionary declaration was prompted by the Las Vegas shooting and the subsequent school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Instead of working on a solution to actually deter or curb gun violence, Trump chose an easy target, and bump stocks became the new buzzword in the “common sense” gun control debate. Before the shooting in Las Vegas, the vast majority of Americans probably had not the slightest clue what a bump stock even was, and to be quite frank, many probably still don’t. They simply weren’t discussed by the media or in gun control arguments before Trump was in office.
A bump stock, sometimes referred to as a bump fire stock or slide-fire stock, is just a piece of plastic that replaces the stock and grip of a semi-automatic rifle. It allows the shooter to simulate fully automatic fire, but in no way changes the functionality of the weapon. The ruling stating that these accessories qualify “machineguns” is utter nonsense. They have no lethal capability and don’t even qualify as a weapon, let alone a “machinegun,” as they are now being reclassified by the ATF.
Furthermore, the 157 page document released this week by the ATF/DOJ incorrectly describes how a bump stock functions, before you even finish reading the summary of the text. The new classification from the DOJ falsely claims that the device allows a shooter to “initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger.” That’s simply not true. The trigger is still pulled once for every single shot fired. The bump stock just uses the force of the recoil and the pressure of the shooters trigger finger and off hand to move the gun in a way that allows the trigger to be pulled faster than the average shooter would be able to fire the weapon.
That being said, the news has made headlines and the pro-Gun Control left is celebrating this as massive victory, while the pro-Gun Rights right is bickering amongst each other as they often do.
The simple fact of the matter is that the ban is nothing more than a wildly unconstitutional executive overreach. The president and his administration cannot unilaterally ban inanimate objects just because they don’t like them. It sets an extremely dangerous precedent. If these items are to be prohibited and deemed illegal, it should go through congress, not by manipulating definitions poorly described in separate legislation from the 1930’s and 1960s (the National Firearms Act 1934 & the Gun Control Act of 1968). I have shot a rifle with a bump stock before, but I don’t own one. It’s a fun novelty for the range or the ranch, but it’s not a weapon in itself, and it doesn’t give a good shooter much of a tactical advantage. Furthermore, even if we were to classify these pieces of plastic as a “machineguns,” that wouldn’t qualify them for an outright ban, as Americans are still allowed to own machineguns, so long as they go through the proper channels and acquire the requisite tax stamp.
Most shooters and gun enthusiasts are fully aware that our country’s gun laws often times don’t make much sense. There are many silly and dated classifications with even more loopholes and workarounds enabling the sportsmen to get what they want, one way or another. They also recognize that bump stocks are an amusing accessory, but not much more. As I mentioned earlier, there would be and has been some bickering about the merit of the item itself, but the larger and more important point, is that we cannot stand for this unilateral unconstitutional action. There is a reason that Obama, with his pen and his phone, didn’t do this. It wasn’t that he was incompetent, and it certainly wasn’t that he cared less about gun violence than Trump. The reason Obama didn’t try to attempt this ban is that it is an obvious and blatant illegal action by the president. Additionally it sets a very dangerous precedent. Could they ban competition triggers next? They allow an individual to shoot faster as well, but perhaps with greater accuracy and precision. What would stop this president or the next from amending a couple definitions and classifications to ban another accessory they don’t like or deem “unsafe?”
Many of our nation’s gun laws do need to be clarified and updated, but they should be done through the proper channels in accordance with the constitution.
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UPDATE
On 12/19/2018, Dianne Feinstein, Senior US Senator from California, stated in her Washington Post OpEd:
"Presidents can rescind regulations just as easily as they create them, and in this case, the bump stock ban will likely be tied up in court for years."
It now looks as that very well may be the case. On December 26th, 2018, Gun Owners of America filed their lawsuit challenging the DOJ and the ATF on this reclassification.