“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Is there anything unclear about that statement? Clear thinking, sober people who can read, understand that the answer to that question is no. Anti-Constitutionalists who want to take our guns away interpret that to mean that only a militia should have guns and now with a standing army and municipal police forces, we have no need for a militia and by extension, no need for civilians to own guns. Every effort to curb gun ownership is a slippery slope, which will inevitably lead to the eventual banning of firearms altogether. President Trump took a step on that slippery slope when he ordered the DOJ to find a way to ban bump stocks legally.
This action by President Trump is one of a few problems I have with him and how he governs. Back in February of 2018 he issued a memorandum directing the DOJ to “dedicate all available resources to complete the review of the comments received, and, as expeditiously as possible, to propose for notice and comment a rule banning all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns”. In this particular instance, Trump pulled a move of which former president Obama would have been proud. Frankly, I am a bit surprised that Obama never did anything like this with respect to firearms himself because the Obama administration hated the second amendment. Nevertheless, the language in this memorandum is inconsistent and contains a logical fallacy. President Trump says early on that after the Obama administration concluded that bumpstocks were lawful, he sought “further clarification of the law restricting fully automatic machine guns.” He goes on later in the memo to order the DOJ to create a rule banning devices that turn legal weapons in to machine guns. And there is the fallacy I mentioned.
Federal law defines a machine gun as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” The NFA – National Firearms Act was enacted back in 1934. It was modified in 1968 by the Gun Control act and the again in 1986 by the Firearm Owners Protection Act. The NFA bans civilians from owning any fully automatic weapons manufactured after 1986. Therefore, any device or modification to a legal firearm that enables it to shoot multiple rounds with a single function of the trigger – making it a machine gun – is already illegal. Further, bump stocks do not enable the firearm to shoot multiple rounds with a single function of the trigger. Bump stocks work by using the recoil of the firearm to assist in rapid-fire pulling of the trigger. When bump firing, the shooter exerts steady forward pressure on the stock with the support hand. The recoil produced by a firearm when it shoots pushes it backward, but the forward pressure exerted on the stock “bump” it back forward until the trigger resets. At this point, the firearm shoots again and starts the process over; thereby increasing the rate of fire without making any changes the mechanics of the weapon. So how can they ban something that is nothing more than an aftermarket accessory?
The DOJ accomplished this by employing a tactic that the left often uses; they manipulated the language. The definition of machine gun quite clear and not open to interpretation, yet the DOJ goes through some semantic chicanery in order to change the definition of machine gun to fit the narrative. The definition of “single function of the trigger” has been revised to mean “single pull of the trigger”. Because bump stocks use recoil to actuate the trigger, once the trigger is pulled, the operator keeps it depressed while the forward pressure on the stock and the recoil completes the cycle. Despite the new definition, while using a bump stock, “a single function of the trigger” results in single projectile being fired from the weapon. That means that the rifle is STILL a semi-automatic weapon. The DOJ has acknowledged that the same effect can be achieved using a rubber band or a shoestring. Are we going to classify rubber bands and shoestrings as automatic weapons now as well? Of course not. So why do this? Why create a rule that either turns tens of thousands of law abiding gun owners in to criminals subject to a penalty of 10 years in a federal prison and a $250,000 fine? Why create a rule that requires individuals, or retailers for that matter, who legally purchased these accessories for hundreds of dollars to turn them in or destroy them with no compensation? For a guy who said that the united states would never be a socialist country, this is a very authoritarian move.
President Trump announced his plans for this after the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, FL. That was a horrific shooting where the system failed those students and that community on multiple levels. I, and many others have addressed those failures before and I do not want re-litigate that here. The president’s stated intention to ban bump stocks after that tragedy is puzzling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the shooter did not use a bump stock. Throughout his campaign and up to that point, President Trump had fashioned himself as a staunch supporter of the second amendment. The unilateral move to ban a plastic accessory clearly infringes on our right to keep and bear arms. Bump stocks do make it easier to shoot more rapidly, but as I stated earlier, you can achieve the same results with other devices and techniques. You can also simply train yourself to shoot faster. That said, what would be next? Will they limit the strength of optic you can attach to your rifle? Will they ban optics altogether? Will they restrict the type of ammunition you can use? What is equally disturbing is that this action opens the door for the next leftist president to order the DOJ to rewrite regulations effectively banning civilian ownership of semi-automatic weapons, not just the fictitious and scary looking “assault weapons” or “military style weapons”.
The slippery slope I mentioned at the beginning of this piece is not limited to firearms. What will stop the next leftist president from issuing an executive order banning fossil fuel? Or banning the production of SUVs? Or any of the other rights and privileges we take for granted on a daily basis? This action showed an unmitigated indifference toward and a willingness to subvert federal law the likes of which we have not seen since, President Obama.