5th circuit revives challenge to bump stock ban

[In It to Win It]

AP via Yahoo News

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A legal challenge to the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks — devices attached to semiautomatic firearms so that a shooter can fire multiple rounds with a single trigger pull — was revived Thursday by a federal appeals court.

A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans had upheld the ban in December, affirming a ruling by a Texas-based federal judge. But an order issued Thursday stated that a majority of the 17-member court had voted to rehear the case. The challenge was brought by a Texas gun owner and is backed by gun rights groups including the National Rifle Association.

The 5th Circuit covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Three other circuit appeals courts have so far rejected challenges to the ban. The Supreme Court has been asked to take up the issue but had not said whether it will do so as of Thursday.

[PTWB]

1. That's an inaccurate description of the device by the AP.

— devices attached to semiautomatic firearms so that a shooter can fire multiple rounds with a single trigger pull —

That’s not at all what the devices do, which is why the ATF, under President Obama, determined they were lawful to possess.

With their finger on the trigger, the shooter pushes forward on the front end rifle, instead of pulling the trigger traditionally, and the the rifle fires. The bump stock slides backwards under recoil causing the trigger to reset while the shooter maintains forward pressure on the front of the rifle, causing the rifle to move forward at the end of the gun’s recoil, which causes the shooter’s finger to pull the trigger again.

With a little practice a shooter can get the push/recoil balance just right and simulate fully automatic fire, but one round is still fired with one pull of the trigger (they’re just very fast pulls).

For the record I don’t think these devices should be lawful to possess without having to register them like a machine gun, I just don’t think that the current law, as it is written, applies to them.

[Amishman]

2. This is an important point, and goes to a larger problem of definitions

Legal definitions are really hard to get right.

The definition of a machine gun was very clearly and specifically written for the designs and ideas that existed about a hundred years ago.

Bump stocks use a method that wasn't really known / considered when the definition was written. It falls outside the scope of that technical definition.

The efforts to ban bump stocks rely on the spirit of the law - to restrict machine guns. The problem is that isn't how jurisprudence works - the direct text of the law matters more, because otherwise all laws are more open to both unequal enforcement and abuse.

The definition needs to be updated in law

[jmowreader]

4. I have always considered this ruling sorta amusing

The supposedly Constitution-hating and gun-grabbing Barack Obama not only never banned any firearm-related item, he signed the greatest expansion of gun rights in our nation’s history by allowing guns to be carried in national parks. A man I met who sells guns also told me Obama tried to get nationwide reciprocity of concealed carry permits (in other words, a gun license would be like a driver’s license in that it would be good in every state) but the GOP killed it on the theory that a Democrat getting a thing like that through would destroy their party.

The gun-loving and Constitution-loving Donald Trump not only banned a firearm-related item, he did it in a way that violates the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment because you’re just supposed to go to a police station and hand it over.