Reuters:
A federal judge gave the Trump administration the go-ahead on Monday to ban “bump stocks” – rapid-fire gun attachments used in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history – in a defeat for firearms rights advocates.
“None of the plaintiffs’ challenges merit preliminary injunctive relief,” Washington-based District Judge Dabney Friedrich wrote in a 64-page ruling.
[ … ]
Friedrich found courts have regularly recognized the ATF’s authority to “interpret and apply the statutes that it administers,” including the definition of a machine gun.
So in other words, because the courts have teamed up with the administrative state to empower themselves even further, it’s okay. There’s precedent for it. Congress doesn’t really matter if we give all authority to the administrative state anyway.
I see that David Codrea is already on this.
Judge Friedrich begins with the assertion that “According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the [Las Vegas] gunman used multiple ‘bump stocks’ in the attack, which increased his rate of fire.” As contrary to most news reports, political claims and public opinion as this may sound, that has never been definitively established, or if it has, that information has not been made public. True, guns were recovered from the scene with bump stocks attached, but, as a Freedom of Information Act response documented, ATF was denied inspection access to weapons at the scene to determine if the ones used had been modified with “machine gun fire-control components or known machine gun conversion devices,” and to this day no report of technical examination has been released.
He further observes, “Who’s still asleep enough to still think this is “just about bump stocks” or still in denial enough to insist that it’s some genius 3D chess maneuver purposely designed to lose in the courts?”
That was my first thought when I read the report from Reuters. Yea, what about that 3D chess match Trump is playing to make this all fail in court? I’ve seen that sort of floated by Glenn Reynolds before, who also notes that this is unconstitutional.
I never once thought that Trump wanted anything but a bump stock ban since (contrary to what the Reuters article says) the NRA gave him cover for it. He believes that gun owners are a monolith represented by the NRA, when in actuality, many if not most of us consider them to be to willing too compromise.
It’s as if Trump doesn’t really know who his base is, or doesn’t understand them, or doesn’t really care, or simply believes he can replace them with another base.
