On bump stock litigation. ATF attempted to bend the law.
Moreover, mastery of one field does not mean mastery of all. The ATF is not an expert
on community morality, so the rationale of deferring to “agency expertise” on this question fails.
And there is great risk if the responsibility of making moral condemnations is assigned to
bureaucrats in the nation’s capital who are physically, and often culturally, distant from the rest
of the country. Federal criminal laws are not administrative edicts handed down upon the masses
as if the administrators were God delivering the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Whether ownership of a bump-stock device should be criminally punished is a question
for our society. Indeed, the Las Vegas shooting sparked an intense national debate on the
benefits and risks of bump-stock ownership. And because criminal laws are rooted in the
community, the people determine for themselves—through their legislators—what is right or
wrong. The executive enforces those determinations. It is not the role of the executive—
particularly the unelected administrative state—to dictate to the public what is right and what is
wrong.https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/21a0070p-06.pdf (page 20)
I'm not so interested in debating bumpstock vs full auto. Current language on full auto (one trigger pull) simply does not cover bumpstock.
It's important to note that Reagan signed the Lautenberg Amendment into law which screwed us on new machine guns. Bush 1 banned the importation of assault weapons and set the Brady Bill into motion. Reagan and Bush both supported the Clinton AWB. Bush 2 stated that he would have happily signed a renewal of the AWB and he also banned the importation of barrels which really hurt the build community. Then Trump gave us his wonderful bumpstock ban.
Nonetheless, the language above is pure fresh air (when there is almost none to be found today).
