Opinion
On Dec. 26, 2018, every American who owned a bump stock, a rifle accessory that facilitates rapid firing, was suddenly guilty of a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. That did not happen because a new law took effect; it happened because federal regulators reinterpreted an existing law to mean something they had long said it did NOT mean.
As anyone who has read the Constitution or watched Schoolhouse Rock could tell you, this is not how laws are supposed to be made. The Trump administration’s bump stock ban, which is at the center of a case that the U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear, raises the question of whether unelected bureaucrats can evade the constitutionally prescribed legislative process by unilaterally criminalizing previously legal conduct.
As the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) explained when it imposed the ban, bump firing is “a technique that any shooter can perform with training or with everyday items such as a rubber band or belt loop.” It involves pushing a rifle forward to activate the trigger by bumping it against a stationary finger, then allowing recoil energy to push the rifle backward, which resets the trigger.
As long as the shooter maintains forward pressure and keeps his finger in place, the rifle will fire repeatedly. The ATF’s rule bans stock replacements that assist this technique by allowing the rifle’s receiver to slide back and forth.
Between 2008 and 2017, the ATF repeatedly said such products were perfectly legal as long as they did not contain a spring or other mechanism that pushes the rifle forward after recoil.
But in March 2018, the agency proposed a new rule declaring that rifles equipped with bump stocks qualified as machine guns, making the accessories illegal.
Why did the ATF change its mind?
In October 2017, a gunman murdered 60 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas, and it turned out that some of his rifles were fitted with bump stocks.
The massacre inspired several bills aimed at banning bump stocks. Noting that “the ATF lacks authority under the law to ban bump-fire stocks,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said “legislation is the only answer.”
President Donald Trump, by contrast, maintained that new legislation was unnecessary. After he instructed the ATF to ban bump stocks by administrative fiat, the agency bent the law to his will.
Federal law defines a machine gun as a weapon that “automatically” fires “more than one shot” by “a single function of the trigger.” A bump-fired rifle shoots just one round for each function of the trigger, and it does not fire “automatically” unless you ignore the ongoing human intervention required to activate the trigger repeatedly.
That is what the ATF did. It also read “a single function of the trigger” to mean a single pull of the trigger (not a bump!). Noting that “the law has not changed,” Feinstein warned that the ATF’s “about face,” which relied on “a dubious analysis claiming that bumping the trigger is not the same as pulling it,” would invite legal challenges.
In response to those challenges, federal appeals courts have disagreed about whether the definition of machine guns is ambiguous and whether the ATF’s new interpretation of it is reasonable. Yet the ATF insists that bump stocks have always been illegal, although no one (including the ATF) realized that until 2018.
The implication is that bump stock producers and owners were inadvertently committing felonies for years. Once the ATF belatedly recognized what it now says the law plainly requires, those accidental felons avoided criminal charges only thanks to prosecutorial discretion. The ATF graciously extended that forbearance until March 26, 2019.
Such capricious invention of crimes is inconsistent with the rule of law and the separation of powers. Neither the Las Vegas massacre nor Trump’s reaction to it changed the law. The Supreme Court should not let the ATF pretend otherwise.
Read Related: Review Route 91: Uncovering the Cover Up, 2017 Las Vegas Shooting ~ VIDEO
About Jacob Sullum
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @JacobSullum. During two decades in journalism, he has relentlessly skewered authoritarians of the left and the right, making the case for shrinking the realm of politics and expanding the realm of individual choice. Jacobs’ work appears here at AmmoLand News through a license with Creators Syndicate.
This gets a lot of play by everyone and rightfully so, but why doesn’t the AA-12 shotgun ban by Trump’s ATF ever gets any play? That’s reprehensible as well.
Count me as one of those who doesn’t believe the narrative in the Las Vegas shooting. Too many experienced people reporting hearing multiple shooters simultaneously firing.
So Trump let the ATF put one over on him when he first got in. Did he get any love from the left for that? I think Trump has learned a huge lesson from that indiscretion. Considering how the BATF has since been slapped down by Trump’s restructured Supreme Court and by many Trump appointed federal judges, I say let’s give Trump another chance to finish the job.
There was more than one shooter at the Las Vegas massacre. I believe the pigeon they blame it on was already dead and it was either a CIA operation or a terrorist organization operating in our country. I can’t reason why terrorists would concentrate on republicans and not want any American to die.
Trump never was a friend of the 2nd or American gun owners. Trump only give rally vote pandering lip service to the 2nd. Trump neve goes into any details about how he would protect the 2nd or your rights.
Trump is in favor of mag ban, universal background checks, waiting periods, background on private sales, body armor ban, ammo ban, end gun shows and more.
name one positive thing trump did for the 2nd or your rights while he was President? opening federal lands to hunting/fishing/target shooting was about all he accomplished.
In many ways Trump was a bit naive during his first term. He allowed snakes hidden in the deep grasses of the DC swamp to deceive him on many issues: Wuhan Madness; bump stocks; deficit spending, the list goes on. Second time around he realizes just how corrupt DC and Wall Street are and will come loaded for bear. That is what the current power elites fear the most. He is a clear and present danger to their definition of ‘democracy’ because he know fully understand what a threat they pose to our Constitutional Republic. Gloves off.
Has Trump learned his lesson and can he be trusted?
that is the million dollar question.
we know that every other deep state war mongering milk toast candidate can not be trusted so do we take a chance on Trump understanding his sell out and promising no repeat or go with the aholes we KNOW will sell us out?
The people that killed Kennedy are still in charge and EVERY other candidate is a deep state tool approved by them so is their really a choice?
Unfortunately far too many of the Trumpbots feverishly overlook the numerous Constitutional violations by the Trump administration. Plus, his releasing the Frankenfauci and crew on the American public with the commensurate destruction of mask mandates, lock down destruction of small business while kowtowing to big businesses, the horrors of the untested vaccine mandates, to name a few of the pogroms implemented by Trump against the American citizenry. Now he is using the credulous lickspittles’ campaign donations to fund his legal fees. I voted for Trump in 2020 and sure it was an election of catastrophic corruption. But time to move… Read more »
This hit piece is an attempt to get Biden re-elected. No wonder gun ownership is at the precipice of extinction. We were warned.
Let’s not forget all the other infringement Trump signed into law with the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 (FixNICS) and advocated for (bans on silencers, body armor, and 3D printing of guns as well as support of the TAPS Act, red flag laws, AWB).