Saturday 3-10-18, Justice Dept Just Made Next Move to BAN Bump Stocks

[DoubleMag]

re; ''...... Owning an AR15 is a RIGHT. Attaching a bump fire stock is a privilege. Buying a beer or gun at 18 is a privilege, adulthood is not spelled out in the Constitution.''

I disagree but if anyone wants to participate simply self-ban just don't purchase the Left's 'flavor of the week' item LoL. In any event the Left is purrrfectly happy to restrict you , one piece at a time

 

[MachIVshooter]

Ahhh, yes you did ...



THAT is NOT what you said in your original post.

This is

Once again, no I didn't, and the two aren't mutually exclusive.

A 7 or 10 year old cannot be called upon to serve or held responsible legally/civilly for anything they do in a capacity remotely resembling what you or I would. They are given impunity from the majority of responsibilities, at the price of certain liberties. That doesn't change the fact that the liberties withheld from children are rights, NOT privileges.

I don't assign a finite age number. I assign a rights and responsibilities concept. Try working on reading comprehension, abstract consideration, and a lucid understanding of the difference between rights and privileges, as well as the difference between humorous sarcasm and attempted levity with sardonic intent.

 

[ford8nr]

They are given impunity from the majority of responsibilities, at the price of certain liberties

Got it.
So now we have rights with restrictions.

Isn't that what this whole thread has been about?

 

[MachIVshooter]

Got it.
So now we have rights with restrictions.

Isn't that what this whole thread has been about?

Rights have always had limitations. That doesn't change the fact that they're not privileges.

You still fundamentally misunderstand the difference between the exercise of constitutional rights by "adults" and why children, who bear no social responsibility whatsoever, aren't able to exercise all of the constitutional rights to the extent a legal adult is. We can debate maturity & judgement all you want, but the crux of it here is, once again, rights & responsibilities, the burden of one being necessary for the benefit of the other, but the restriction of liberty without due process whilst still bearing full legal responsibility and social obligations as an "adult" being morally & ethically wrong. Think of it as you forcing your children to pay market value rent , provide their own transportation, and buy their own food and clothing as an adult would whilst dictating what groceries they can buy, what they can wear, still enforcing a bed time, disallowing video games, etc. as we do on children when we're supporting/providing for them fully as parents. Until you get a handle on the distinction here, I'm done with this dilalogue.

And the thread is about the banning of an item, the forced forfeiture of a once-legal item without compensation. We've had other threads about raising age limits on long gun purchases and the like, but it ain't this one

 

[ford8nr]

I'm done with this dilalogue.

Well we agree on something, me too.

 

[DannyLandrum]

This is wrong for so many reasons, roughly in order:

1. Why should bump stocks, which produce relatively-unstable full-auto fire, be regulated *MORE* strictly (i.e. ban) than actual registered full-autos, which are legal but closely regulated (not banned), and create more stable (more deadly) full auto fire? It makes less than no sense. Put them into the NFA either with or without a moratorium (but no ban).

2. It's flat out unconstitutional (slam dunk) on the grounds that Justice is exceeding its delegated authority from Congress (under administrative law), and possibly on 10th amendment and le 2nd amendment grounds.

3. Drumpf is in favor of this, and is putting Sessions in an extremely tough spot, as his political career - ever again being elected from super-pro-gun Alabama - will be over if he complies. But of course, I've been screaming from the rooftops since June '16 how bad and liberal and anti-gun Drumpf is but the trumpkins don't listen no matter what he does.

4. The freakin NRA has said they supported a bumpfire stock ban, so you know they're not going to fight it in court, even though they should, given the blatant unconstitutionality of a ban not passed by Congress, especially in light of the fact that the BATFE has expressly stated (in leaked internal memos, with strong cited legal support) that they do not believe that they have to constitutional authority to ban bump stocks - and if BATFE doesn't, neither does Justice.

 

[ClickClickD'oh]

4. The freakin NRA has said they supported a bumpfire stock ban

No they didn't. They said two things:

1) That the ATF should review their legality. They said that right after saying that they've already been upheld twice. IE, well make the ATF tell you three times that they are legal.

2) That devices that make a semiauto function as an auto should be regulated. Except that a bumpfire stock doesn't do that. A bumpfire stock simply makes a semiauto rifle a fast firing semiauto rifle. Drop In Autosears make a semiauto rifle function as an automatic.

 

[jmorris]

Frankly I don’t see bump stocks or raising the age to purchase as big issues to take our rights away.

That’s the way they want to you feel.

Get the turn bolt, shotgun, handgun guys throwing the other guy overboard. Then next have the shotgun and turn bolt guys throw the handgun guys over board. Then the shotgun guys turn their backs on the “sniper rifle” owners. At that point it will be easy to take what’s left from the shotgun guys.


Won’t be done overnight, heck it’s been 32 years since they closed the registry on transferable machineguns and people are still standing behind the right to possess them, unfortunately not as many that think semiautos should be banned but at least there is a large enough group to keep that from happening, so far...

 

[DannyLandrum]

Well said, Jmorris.

OK, I can buy that clickclick.

 

[BSA1]

I'll get flamed but ... Owning an AR15 is a RIGHT.

No it is not. Read Justice Scalia's opinion in Heller.

So we fight and win the bump stock ban. Now every crazy knows what a bump stock is. Next mass shooting get committed with a bump stock. What do you think the final cost will be to the shooting community that advocated for them ?

A strong argument can be made the school shootings are a copycats due to the intense media coverage and anti-gun politicians ranting on TV.

 

[barnbwt]

No it is not. Read Justice Scalia's opinion in Heller.



A strong argument can be made the school shootings are a copycats due to the intense media coverage and anti-gun politicians ranting on TV.

Wait, so an obviously common-use rifle (if not *the* rifle in common use) among both civilians and arguably the military was not protected under the 2nd Amendment according to the tests described (but never subsequently applied) in Heller?

Scalia made noises about M16s being bannable because of either his own or Kennedy's ignorance (regarding their similarity to semi-autos), but AR15s meet all the same criteria he dreamed up to protect common defensive handguns (AR pistols even more so). Crooked DAs who mock Heller can't have it both ways, at least not legally

 

[DannyLandrum]

"No it is not. Read Justice Scalia's opinion in Heller."

Ha ha - YOU are the one who should actually read the opinion. The key criteria is "common use" and virtually nothing is in more common use for self-defense than MSR15s. You are very wrong.

 

[AlexanderA]

I don't believe we can cite Heller to protect AR-15's. Yes, I know about Scalia's "common use" test, but in the context of the case, he was referring to ordinary handguns. Anyway, the lower courts have upheld all AWB's enacted since Heller. There are plenty of things (dicta) in Scalia's opinion that could be used to support all sorts of draconian restrictions on guns. According to the actual holding in the Heller case, what's protected by the 2nd Amendment is a loaded handgun in the home, kept for self defense. Anything beyond that is left to further litigation, and so far the Supreme Court has shown no willingness to take up the gun issue again. Lower courts are just fine with AWB's.

 

[ilbob]

this is what I think. you cannot change the law by rule. you can try but the law is pretty clear about what a machine gun is. I think trump is doing us a big favor. this ban goes to court it is going to lose. that's a good thing for us.

 

[CapnMac]

reached the age of majority, which was 21 at the time.

Actually, in 1790s, it was 25. The majority at 21 actually comes from federal child labor laws (the underclass was allowed to start working at 13-15, unless their parent could afford better).

Here's a quandry; A suspect under the age of eighteen has rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, yet (before becoming a suspect) does not have rights under the 2nd. Why?

This ^^^ is the nub of it. Now, this dovetails into a discussion of libertarian (that's lowercase "l") philosophy on when we each get to assert our individual rights. Toothy stuff with much to chew upon; sadly not germane to THR.

As far as being able to excercise one's 2nd Amendment rights at 18

Well, we could quote the Militia Act, whoch does define the age of the unorganized militia (every free citizen not in an organized mi

 

[hdwhit]

DoubleMag wrote:
36,000 comments vast majority were against the ban...

But since the ATF wasn't asking whether or not people were for or against the ban, it was a complete waste of time for those people who used it as an opportunity to vent. When an agency asks for public comments as part of the regulatory process, any response that doesn't address the question(s) the agency has posed go straight into the recycling bin. Thousands of people didn't read the directions and so squandered their opportunity to participate in the rule-making process.

 

[hdwhit]

ilbob wrote:
this is what I think. you cannot change the law by rule.

Agency regulations are statements of how the agency reads, interprets and intends to apply the law. They do no seek to - nor can they - change the law. But changing the law is not what is going on here.

At this point you have no idea what the attorneys and technicians charged with reviewing the regulations and coming up with a new version are going to write so its really pretty presumptuous of you to assume that they will try to undermine the law. They could go through the process and come to the conclusion that they can't rule on the issue.

There is precedent for this. Just look at 26 USC 41(d)(4)(E) where the drafters of one of the many sets of proposed regulations written over the years for that provision explicitly told Congress they believed it was not possible to formulate a definition for a category of a particular category of "business component" known as "internal use software".

 

[hdwhit]

Hokie_Phd wrote:
Until a viable third party or third and fourth party come about. The GOP is the lesser of two evils on 2nd Amendment issues.

Really?

When Obama was President, nobody banned bump stocks. No guns were banned. His plethora of executive orders had little practical effect. And people were still so afraid he was coming after everyone's guns that they were all but impoverishing themselves to buy as many as they could leading to record sales and profits for the industry.

Now with the GOP in control of the White House, Congress and Trump having appointed a conservative to the Supreme Court we've got a looming bump stock ban, Trump talking about seizing guns BEFORE the exercise of due process and Remington is looking for debtor-in-possession financing so that they can file for bankruptcy.

It seems to me the GOP hasn't done us any favors lately and that having the two parties in tension for control produces the best outcome on 2A issues.

 

[DoubleMag]

When an agency asks for public comments as part of the regulatory process, any response that doesn't address the question(s) the agency has posed go straight into the recycling bin. Thousands of people...

...OBVIOUSLY had their response viewed and sorted. YES, they were counted (er, um, yes,that's how we now know the raw data on what was said).

Sorry to repeat but discounting 72% of responders to a survey is foolish, I do not believe the bureau Superv.'s casually dismissed 10s of 1000s of returns! No!

 

[BSA1]

Wait, so an obviously common-use rifle (if not *the* rifle in common use) among both civilians and arguably the military was not protected under the 2nd Amendment according to the tests described (but never subsequently applied) in Heller?

Scalia made noises about M16s being bannable because of either his own or Kennedy's ignorance (regarding their similarity to semi-autos), but AR15s meet all the same criteria he dreamed up to protect common defensive handguns (AR pistols even more so).

You are attempting to expand the ruling by cherry picking Justice Scalia comments.

See comments below.

"No it is not. Read Justice Scalia's opinion in Heller."

Ha ha - YOU are the one who should actually read the opinion. The key criteria is "common use" and virtually nothing is in more common use for self-defense than MSR15s. You are very wrong.

Actually I have read a lot of it although not all of it. Heller is over 600 pages long. How much of it have you read?

I don't believe we can cite Heller to protect AR-15's. Yes, I know about Scalia's "common use" test, but in the context of the case, he was referring to ordinary handguns. Anyway, the lower courts have upheld all AWB's enacted since Heller. There are plenty of things (dicta) in Scalia's opinion that could be used to support all sorts of draconian restrictions on guns. According to the actual holding in the Heller case, what's protected by the 2nd Amendment is a loaded handgun in the home, kept for self defense. Anything beyond that is left to further litigation, and so far the Supreme Court has shown no willingness to take up the gun issue again. Lower courts are just fine with AWB's.

Thank you for your comments. It is obvious that you have taken time to study the Heller decision.

As you note Heller is a very narrow decision focusing only on the right to own a handgun in a persons home. It is not the big expansion victory many gun owners believe it is.

For those who have not taken the time to actually research and read Heller here are the relevant comments in Justice Scalia’s opinion;

“nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those "in common use at the time.’ 307 U. S., at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”

“like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”


http://www.scotusblog.com/2008/06/heller-quotes-from-the-majority/

 

[AlexanderA]

It seems to me the GOP hasn't done us any favors lately and that having the two parties in tension for control produces the best outcome on 2A issues.

The recent upset victories of Doug Jones in Alabama and Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania -- both of whom ran on pro-gun platforms -- show that guns are not an exclusively partisan issue. The NRA is making a great mistake in portraying itself as an arm of the Republican party. It needs to go back to its old policy of endorsing candidates of either party who are strong for guns. Never let the parties take gun owners for granted (either pro or con).

 

[H&R Glock]

Defining the word "BAN" will be the payoff. Then we'll know what they are talking about. Do the words ex post facto have meaning here?

 

[barnbwt]

You are attempting to expand the ruling by cherry picking Justice Scalia comments.

See comments below.





Actually I have read a lot of it although not all of it. Heller is over 600 pages long. How much of it have you read?




Thank you for your comments. It is obvious that you have taken time to study the Heller decision.

As you note Heller is a very narrow decision focusing only on the right to own a handgun in a persons home. It is not the big expansion victory many gun owners believe it is.

For those who have not taken the time to actually research and read Heller here are the relevant comments in Justice Scalia’s opinion;

“nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those "in common use at the time.’ 307 U. S., at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”

“like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”


http://www.scotusblog.com/2008/06/heller-quotes-from-the-majority/

For all the talk of how Heller is a great big bunch of words, it all keeps coming back to those same three paragraphs, doesn't it?

From my reading of several dozen portions of the opinion (the ones not completely indecipherable to the non-lawyer) it seems Scalia went to great lengths to construct a bottom-up argument along historical, precedential, and logical lines, which all point in a single direction; that a gun like the AR15 must be protected under the RKBA.

He then disjointedly contradicts all this background with a single sentence that lacks any background support whatsoever, which of course becomes the only section cited by anyone. Personally, I think he or Kennedy were simply scared of where an honest assessment of the RKBA had led, so the opinion was tainted to prevent the complete dismantling of gun control then and there.

The conclusion doesn't match the proof used to arrive at the destination.

Even SCOTUS has its limits, and we know it's less than 1 trillion dollars as evidenced by the odd ACA rulings. Taken as a whole, the political value of gun control is easily that much.

 

[barnbwt]

The recent upset victories of Doug Jones in Alabama and Connor Lamb in Pennsylvania -- both of whom ran on pro-gun platforms -- show that guns are not an exclusively partisan issue. The NRA is making a great mistake in portraying itself as an arm of the Republican party. It needs to go back to its old policy of endorsing candidates of either party who are strong for guns. Never let the parties take gun owners for granted (either pro or con).

That's all well and good, but I should think we both know that neither of those Democrats are more pro-gun than their counterparts, nor will side with gun owners during actual votes. It's played out over and over where supposed pro-gun Democrats are given the opportunity, and side with the national party every time. That party simply does not tolerate deviation from platform orthodoxy on this issue, the way the Republican party does.

 

[AlexanderA]

As you note Heller is a very narrow decision focusing only on the right to own a handgun in a persons home. It is not the big expansion victory many gun owners believe it is.

The importance of Heller is that it invalidated the District's absolute ban on handguns (in place since 1976). The principle of the case is that the 2nd Amendment precludes absolute bans on guns. That's important, but it leaves a lot of room for restrictions short of absolute bans. The antigunners can concoct schemes that, in practice, make gun ownership very difficult.