First Bump Stock Ban Case Falters In Court
BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 1 month ago
The first case testing a Trump administration edict outlawing bump stocks failed during a brief federal bench trial in Tuesday in Houston.A federal prosecutor withdrew the unique charge before the trial began for a Houston man accused of owning the device. However, the defense was prepared to call an ATF expert to testify that bump stocks, attachments that cause a rifle to fire more rapidly, do not render a semiautomatic gun a machine gun.
Senior U.S. District Judge Gray H. Miller convicted Ajay Dhingra, 44, on three remaining counts that he lied when he purchased a handgun, rifle and ammunition, and illegally possessed a weapon as a person who had been committed for mental illness.
Experts had conflicting views on the matter, said defense attorney Tom Berg. But Rick Vasquez, a retired ATF agent and firearms expert, would have told the court the bump stock did not meet the statutory definition of a machine gun. The prosecution dismissed case, he said, because the government couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt the bump stock was a machine gun.
Prosecutors don’t indiscriminately drop cases. They do it if they think they have a bad case and a non-trivial chance of losing, coupled with high consequences of a loss.
This continues a pattern of cases where the ATF feels that continued prosecution of a case could possibly cause a loss in court and a restriction of their ability to enforce other regulations.
It’s good to see this loss, as the bump stock ruling should never have even seen the light of day.
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On November 18, 2020 at 6:23 am, Wes said:
We might see this yo-yo effect with pistol braces as well, given the number of signed letters “in the wild” from ATF management on the topic, including at least a couple reinforcing the notion that “we evaluate the device technically, not the intent of the user.”