06.14.2024
BUMP STOCK BAN OVERTURNED BY SCOTUS
It’s not often that we get to bring you good news, and lately it’s been extremely rare, but today we are pleased to report the third major pro-rights victory in two days. (We updated yesterday’s alert on the website to include the court victory against Biden’s efforts to entrap any gun owner who transferred a firearm.)
Today the US Supreme Court struck down the Trump “bump stock” ban, correctly noting, that politics and word games aside, “bump stocks” are not machine guns and do not make semi-auto firearms machine guns, no matter how hard ignorant or malicious people attempt to twist the English language.
Given that the dedicated public servants over at ATF have actually determined that a shoelace is a machine gun this is a tremendous victory for sanity, common sense, and the all too rare notion that words actually mean something. Remember, the bump stock ban did not say bump stocks identified as machine guns. It said they were machine guns.
With the usual suspects dissenting and demonstrating a complete and embarrassing lack of understanding of simple mechanical principles (if you don’t know what a “woman” is you are going to struggle with concepts like “trigger groups”) the court correctly analyzed the definitions that are actually written into our laws and concluded that bump stocks do not meet the very clear definition of “machine gun” under US regulations.
“Bump stocks” were banned by Trump in a knee jerk reaction to a mass shooting in Las Vegas. There may never have been a criminal event that was “investigated” more sloppily and with so little credibility. In the end, every single “conclusion” reached by the “investigators” was suspect. The much reported use of bump stocks in that horrible crime is likewise highly suspect.
The firearms community has long argued over the value of bump stocks and some have expressed the opinion that they are pointless gadgets that serve no useful purpose. Some even felt that their prohibition was no big deal. We disagree. While the only real purpose they may serve is turning money into noise, if bureaucrats, even the President of the United States, can arbitrarily change the meaning of words, nothing is safe. It is a short distance between saying sliding plastic parts are machine guns to saying AR-15’s are machine guns. In fact we have seen this very issue arise with the just overturned ban on stabilizing braces, the reinvention of what defines a “firearm” for the purpose of mandatory registration, and Biden’s demented attempt to say that any gun owner who wants to transfer a gun to another person is a “gun dealer.”
These victories are all the more rewarding given the vicious war on gun owners declared by Biden’s handlers and the rest of the far left apparatchiks in control of the government at this time. (Biden’s recent rambling speech at an anti-2nd Amendment group about keeping guns out of the wrong hands and “safe storage” while his crackhead son was being found guilty of gun crimes was surreal.)
While we have our own battles in Oregon with an anti-gun Democrat majority and a Republican minority that refuses to stand up and fight, a victory anywhere in the country is a victory for all gun owners. Your support and activism in these battles is the reason for every inch of ground we take back. So take a moment to congratulate yourself. And thank you.