At one time we 'enumerated' most of the stuff the .gov couldn't do, rather than the few things they'd let us do...I guess once you have enough power, it's easier to brand everything that's
not yours
Need to do some research, but those tests sound remarkably familiar...to how the ATF distinguishes semi-autos from full-autos.
Would
love to see if they had a hand in lobbying this (a FOIA betwixt her office & local/national ATF branch would likely be illuminating, as there is no way the Tech Branch wasn't at least consulted)
Have to say, it is odd that 'charging handle' and 'extractor' were added, but not barrel. Very odd choice of item completely irrelevant to function, there. Potentially brilliant, though; not hardly ANY semi-autos on that list with equivalents that don't use the same bolt head AND charging handle (heck, even the ultra-neutered HK guns like the SL8 still used the same handle & extractor on their 'trimmed' bolt head)
I don't see any sort of consideration for the disconnect between treating the "receiver" as the assault weapon to be classified (permanently, same as with NFA items), and the fact that their list of items may or may not have anything to do with it. Swapping between standard & side-charging uppers, for instance (sounds like they're forcing AR owners into a tactically-superior layout
)
They also say "weapon" not "rifle," so are we sure this doesn't apply to handguns? Or won't, shortly?
Do the 'common' components have to be common to the same gun? Would my UMP-lower/MP5-upper mutt build qualify, for instance? An AR with CETME or AK trigger parts?
The interesting part here is that the AG and her office did this without legislative support.
That's my point; the half-baked AWBs of the past were half-baked to keep Fudds on board, rather than because the anti's weren't aware of or didn't care about semi-autos in general (which is why broad-based items like mags, and now systems, are being attacked now that Fudd influence has faded)
I suppose on one hand we could call this progress; they are finally meeting us on the field of battle as equals, putting real ideas & arguments forth for us to oppose, instead of nonsense & insults. So the debate has shifted from 'cater to our dumb whims' to 'how exactly shall we define & restrict these weapons we don't care for' which is both heartening and troubling. We may at long last be getting into real debates in the courts about the justification for banning "assault extractors" for example, or gas systems, or even semi-auto vs. automatic fire, because even a judge will demand an explanation for why THE MOST popular rifles sold can no longer be possessed for the sake of public interest, except for the huge numbers of THE MOST popular rifle already owned that are being tolerated (for now).
Honest debate is scarier, since their arguments & tactics will become more refined; we can no longer call them wholly ignorant & stupid children on this matter & humiliate them with an FNAR alongside a BAR Shorttrac, for instance. Now we get into the bigger, hairier questions of whether we wish to live in a country where we may own semi-autos in general, whether we can restrict entire classes of technology because of their capacity as tools for wrongdoing (large trucks...), whether we can enact such restriction while simultaneously permitting huge numbers of the same items to "roam the streets" even though these exact same guns are the exact reason the law was supposedly passed.
They're bringing their A game and bothering to learn a little about guns; we need to do the same. Semi-auto trigger groups are practically indistinguishable from full-auto ones when closed-bolt designs like all we have left are concerned, and can generally be modified to operate similarly, so this "class of technology" argument can and will ultimately play on fears of machineguns to get ALL semi-autos banned (potentially at the ATF level through interpretation & amnesty, which is why I am so curious to see if their fingers are on this MA effort) so we need to be ready to defend machineguns when the time comes --an awful lot of gun owners on here are not prepared to do so.
Time to stop running & finding workarounds (Bullet Button 2.0) to bad law, and time to start confronting it forcefully.
TCB