The “Airman” Who Set Himself on Fire for Hamas was Antifa Ex-Cult Member
A former leftist cult member who hooked up with anarchist and socialist groups and then killed himself for their approval.

“The “Airman” Who Set Himself on Fire for Hamas was Antifa Ex-Cult Member”

If you had told the average person that an anarchist or an airman had set himself on fire to protest Israel’s campaign against Islamic terrorists, you would get two very different reactions.

Unsurprisingly the media led with the data point most likely to produce a favorable reaction. And Aaron Bushnell cynically played the same game, wearing (the wrong) uniform to his Hamas suicide attempt rather than the Antifa red in which he had been previously photographed.

The Washington Post gets around to admitting that Bushnell was an “anarchist”.

Less than two weeks before Aaron Bushnell walked toward the gates of the Israeli Embassy on Sunday, he and a friend talked by phone about their shared identities as anarchists and what kinds of risks and sacrifices were needed to be effective…

Lupe Barboza, 32, said she met Bushnell in San Antonio in 2022 at an event for a socialist organization. She said they bonded over their politics …

“He was outraged, and he knew that no one who is in charge is listening to the protesters out there every week,” Barboza said. “He knows that he has privilege as a White man and a member of the military.”

But the Washington Post then misleadingly suggests he was raised in a Christian cult.

Bushnell was raised in a religious compound in Orleans, Mass., on Cape Cod, according to Susan Wilkins, 59, who said she was a member of the group from 1970 to 2005. She said that she knew Bushnell and his family on the compound and that he was still a member when she left in 2005. Wilkins said she heard through members of Bushnell’s family that he eventually left the group.

The group, called the Community of Jesus, has faced allegations of inappropriate behavior, which it has publicly disputed. In a lawsuit against an Ontario school, where many officials were alleged to be members of the U.S.-based religious group, former students called the Community of Jesus a “charismatic sect” and alleged that it “created an environment of control, intimidation and humiliation that fostered and inflicted enduring harms on its students.” The school, now defunct, disputed the allegations…

Wilkins also said it is common for members of the Community of Jesus to join the military, describing the transition as moving from “one high-control group to another high-control group.”

All of this prompts WaPo readers to think that the Community of Jesus is some conservative group. The reality is COJ was a leftist cult that appealed to high-flying liberals.

They were two overweight boozing housewives who hid their drinking, their harridan brawling and their lesbian affair from all but a few obeisant servants. They lived like royalty with a private plane at their command, a Jaguar, a Bermuda estate and a flat in England…

And having founded an ultra-authoritarian Christian community that attracted the wealthy, the successful and often the mind-bruised to their compound on Massachusetts’s Cape Cod peninsula…

As word of the community’s formation spread through New England and across the United States, a handful of single women became the first to join, followed by young academics and professionals, people from business and government, and the socialite elite, refugees from the drug culture and hippiedom, many carrying the wounds of troubled and unhappy childhoods and looking for certainty in life, for rules, structure and something to belong to…

A 1985 article in Boston magazine characterized the C of J members as a “roll call €¦ from the Social Register and Who’s Who” — executives or children of executives of major corporations, an ex-chairman of the global accounting firm that is now Ernst & Young and former president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an ex-assistant defence secretary, a former senior editor from Doubleday, family scions of Texas oil and agriculture money, the daughter of a former president of the New York Stock Exchange, a Rockefeller heiress (Isabel Lincoln Elmer, self-styled Cinderella Rockefeller), celebrity Christians such as Jeff and Carrie Buddington, former hippie drug dealers featured in Life magazine…

COJ’s leading ladies appropriated Christianity to found an otherwise generic cult. They were not religious per se until they started to run a faith-healing operation. If you doubt their politics, look at the laudatory New York Times orbit and the fact that most of the critical stories about COJ have come from conservative media outlets like The Boston Herald and Canada’s Globe and Mail.

Who’s the sort of person who would commit suicide in a graphic public way for his politics? Aaron Bushnell was a former leftist cult member who hooked up with anarchist and socialist groups in search of an identity and then killed himself for their approval.

He graduated from a cult to a death cult.

Poll: Almost a Third of Americans Say the First Amendment Goes ‘Too Far’
The survey also found that two-thirds of respondents believe that America is on the “wrong track” when it comes to free speech.

According to a new poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment organization, nearly a third of Americans, including similar numbers of Republicans and Democrats, say that the First Amendment goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. More than half agreed that their local community should not allow a public speech that espouses a belief they find particularly offensive.

“Those results were disappointing, but not exactly surprising,” said FIRE Chief Research Adviser Sean Stevens in a Tuesday press release. “Here at FIRE, we’ve long observed that many people who say they’re concerned about free speech waver when it comes to beliefs they personally find offensive. But the best way to protect your speech in the future is to defend the right to controversial and offensive speech today.”

The survey, which was conducted in partnership with the Polarization Research Lab (PRL) at Dartmouth College, asked 1,000 Americans about their opinions on free speech and expression. The survey found that “when it comes to whether people are able to freely express their views,” over two-thirds of respondents said they believed America was headed in the wrong direction. Further, only 25 percent of respondents agreed that the right to free speech was “very” or “completely” secure.

The survey also asked respondents to read a dozen controversial statements and pick the one they found most offensive. The most disliked beliefs were that “all whites are racist oppressors,” followed by statements like “America got what it deserved on 9/11” and “January 6th was a peaceful protest.” The survey then asked respondents whether they’d agree with allowing this opinion to be expressed in different circumstances.

Half of the respondents said that their community “definitely” or “probably” should not permit a public speech expressing the opinion they found most offensive. A whopping 69 percent said a local college should “definitely” or “probably” not allow a professor who holds such an opinion to teach there. Over a quarter of respondents said that someone who previously said the offensive opinion should be fired from their job.

These results indicate that though the average American is concerned about protecting free speech rights, a significant portion of the population seem poised to welcome increasing censorship.

“The average American already thinks that free speech in America is in dire straits. Most worryingly, they think it will get worse,” said Stevens. “These findings should be a wake-up call for the nation to recommit to a vibrant free speech culture before it’s too late.”

Klamath Dam Removal: ‘It’s an Environmental Disaster.’

‘They purposefully made a disaster and are leaving taxpayers and the locals to clean up their mess’
This is the first article in a series about the Klamath Dam Removal project in Siskiyou County. 

The removal of dams along the Klamath River in Siskiyou County, Northern California was sold as necessary to save salmon – specifically, “to restore habitat for endangered fish.”

The dams are part of the Klamath project, a series of seven dams built in the 1910’s and 1920’s in the Klamath Basin to bring electricity and agricultural water mitigation for Southern Oregon and Northern California, the Globe reported in 2020. However, in recent years, concerns over the dams’ effect on the wildlife and fishing industry have been raised, especially regarding claims of fish facing extinction because the dams.

Klamath Dam Removal Project. (Photo: KlamathRenewal.org)

In 2018, plans were released to destroy the dam system. However, those plans halted in 2019 because of data errors and issues over who owns the dams. The Bureau of Reclamation swiftly issued a study on the dams’ effects through 2024, leading to California to again push for destruction of the dams.

In June 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee halted plans again, ruling that PacificCorp, an Oregon utility company owned by Warren Buffett’s Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway, would have to transfer it’s hydroelectric license and co-licensee with the Klamath River Renewal Corp., as well as pay $250 million toward getting out of the demolition project to avoid any liabilities around the demolition.

Governor Newsom implored Buffett to back the demolition project to save the salmon populations that Native American tribes in the area rely on. “The river is sick, and the Klamath Basin tribes are suffering,” said Newsom in his letter. “The Klamath dam removals are a shining example of what we can accomplish when we act according to our values.”

Many tribes also issued a joint letter with Governor Newsom in support of the dams destruction.

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Editorial Says WA Gun Control Bill ‘Uses Public Safety as Smoke Screen’

An editorial in the normally pro-gun-control Seattle Times says a gun control measure aimed at licensed firearms retailers “pushes gun control to a level of punishment for legitimate businesses.”

Singling out House Bill 2118 from among three measures still in play, the Times editorial board recognizes the restrictive nature of the legislation.

“Some lawmakers may not like the selling of guns in Washington,” the editorial acknowledges, “but it’s a legal business. The Times editorial board praised the Legislature for enacting laws that banned the sale of assault-style weapons and ammunition over the past two years. But HB 2118 unnecessarily tightens the rein on gun dealers while using the public’s safety as a smoke screen.”

It is a stunning acknowledgement from a newspaper editorial board which traditionally has supported all kinds of gun control measures.

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How is American Freedom Too Sensitive for Public Spaces?

If a freedom-loving NRA member from, say, 1994, had been able to look into a crystal ball and see 30 years forward to today, they’d no doubt be pleased and perhaps a bit jealous, but also a little perplexed.

They’d notice the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in D.C. v. Heller (2008), McDonald v. Chicago (2010) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which together decree that the Second Amendment is not a second-class right. It protects each law-abiding citizen’s right to own and carry firearms for self-defense and for other legal purposes. They’d be pleased to see this.

They’d notice the massive expansion of constitutional carry, the passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005 and the huge growth in gun ownership and of concealed carry in general and, again, they’d be pleased.

They’d see all the new and useful carry options in handguns, holsters and more and would likely be a little jealous.

Indeed, they’d marvel at the renaissance for this freedom.

But they’d also shake their heads and clench their fists at the endless, and often novel, attacks from gun-control proponents on our Second Amendment rights.

And then, finally, they’d have to be perplexed as they wondered what this “sensitive-places” thing is all about.

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The Age of Lawlessness

Violent crime peaked in 1993 within the United States. Since then, it has trended downward due in great part to the “broken windows” style, proactive police work, video surveillance everywhere, and the increase of concealed carriers. In 2020, the year of the Covid 19 lockdowns, crime spiked again in the wake of the rioting surrounding a particular incident of police action.

What has followed since is an increase in lawlessness. The combination of police being afraid to do their jobs due to progressives seeking to prosecute them even when they do everything right, along with progressive prosecutors who confuse justice reform with simply not prosecuting violent offenders, has led to a complete breakdown of law and order in urban areas.

Police retirement is at an all-time high, and recruitment is at an all-time low. The movement to defund and hamstring police while simultaneously not prosecuting violent offenders is a social suicide pact that is gleefully embraced by large cities, so here we are.

For many years, the leaders in the self-defense community have warned, “You are on your own; nobody is coming to save you.” While it has always been true in the sense that the police simply cannot arrive on time to stop an in-progress assault, now it is quite literally true that police may never come at all. Response times are at a low, and many departments are running on skeleton crews, so depending on where you live, you may get no response, no matter what the situation is.

Ironically, most who have driven this political agenda of defunding the police are also entirely on board with civilian disarmament. Make no mistake, this faction wants you unarmed and helpless and wants to ensure that there are no police to protect you either, from the criminals that they intentionally set loose on your streets.

Those who support such policies remain willfully foolish until the point that their own door gets smashed in or they get carjacked, personally, even though they think such things only happen on the other side of town, not in their gentrified neighborhood.

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Biden Convinced Media He Was ‘Powerless’ To Fix Border Crisis. Then He Changed His Mind.

The Biden administration let it be known on Thursday [the 22nd] that the president is considering taking executive action to address the crisis at the southern border. News outlets appeared impressed.

Axios called the leaked White House plan to limit asylum claims President Joe “Biden’s Bold and Risky Border Move.” Politico declared it a “sweeping new approach.” The New York Times put four reporters on the story.

It was an abrupt pivot for the mainstream media, which have long repeated Biden and his Democratic allies’ claims that he is all but powerless to slow the unprecedented flood of migrants into the United States.

FLASHBACK: After congressional Republicans earlier this month killed a Democrat-backed border bill, the White House denied GOP claims that the president already has the power to deal with the crisis.

“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Biden said.

The media rushed to prove him right:

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BLACK HILLS PICKS UP $30 MILLION NAVY/MARINE CORPS AMMO CONTRACT

South Dakota-based Black Hills last week beat out five other ammunition makers to deliver 9mm ammo to the Navy and Marine Corps.

The $30,885,083 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract covers the procurement, manufacturing, testing, inspection, and packaging of 9mm barrier blind cartridges to the Navy and Marine Corps. These will be for use in the services’ front-line 9mm pistols including the Beretta M9 and SIG Sauer M17 and M18.

The rounds were chosen for “combat purposes to provide enhanced terminal effects,” as described by the contracting agency, the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Corona Division, in Norco, California. NSWC Corona first listed the contract opportunity last June and had six competitive bids submitted.

Although it is not disclosed what loads were submitted for testing, Black Hills introduced its Honey Badger Line of self-defense ammo in 2015, which used a monolithic copper solid projectile to consistently penetrate barriers. In its 100-grain +P version, the Black Hills Honeybadger 9mm archives 1,250 FPS velocity out of a 4.4-inch test barrel and generates 347 foot-pounds of energy. The company also makes a 125-grain Subsonic Honeybadger.

 

The Black Hills 125-grain 9mm Subsonic Honeybadger
The Black Hills 125-grain 9mm Subsonic Honeybadger. (Graphic: Black Hills)

Compare this to the standard M1152 load developed by Winchester which was selected in 2016 as the ammunition supplier for the U.S. Army Modular Handgun System program. Using a 115-grain flat nose full metal jacketed bullet, the 9x19mm Luger round has a distinctive shape. With a brass case and military primer, it has an advertised velocity of 1,320 FPS at the muzzle which translates to 445 foot-pounds of energy. Downrange these shifts to 1,301/432 at 5 yards and 132/387 at 25 yards, according to the tables provided by the company.

The work on the Navy’s new barrier blind cartridge will be performed at Black Hills’ Rapid City plant and is expected to be completed by February 2029.

NSSF Wins Preliminary Injunction Against California Law Allowing Frivolous Lawsuits Against Gun Industry

A U.S. District Judge has granted an injunction prohibiting the enforcement of California’s law that exposes firearms manufacturers and retailers to lawsuits in the state for lawful commerce in firearms that takes place entirely outside the state of California when those legally made and sold products are misused by criminals and others.

The ruling by Judge Schopler in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of California enjoined the enforcement of California AB 1594, the so-called “Firearm Industry Responsibility Act.” NSSF sued to challenge the law in June 2023 and moved for an injunction. In granting the injunction, Judge Schopler found the law is likely unconstitutional because it violates the Commerce Clause.

“We are thankful the court enjoined the state from suing members of the firearm industry under this unconstitutional law that attempts to use the real threat of liability on commerce beyond California’s borders and impose its policy choices on its sister states,” stated NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence G. Keane.

Among other provisions, California AB 1594 bans the manufacture, sale and marketing of firearms the state deems “abnormally dangerous.” It allows civil lawsuits against a firearm industry member to be filed by the Attorney General, any municipality and any person who claims to have suffered harm from the misuse of a legal, lawfully sold firearm by a remote third party. The law unconstitutionally invades the sovereignty of sister states by directly regulating lawful commerce occurring entirely outside the state of California in violation of the Commerce Clause and the United States’ system of federalism. The law also violates the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) enacted by Congress in 2005 to stop just these sorts of frivolous lawsuits against members of the industry.

“We are reviewing the balance of the court’s decision and whether we will file an amended complaint to provide the court more details on how California’s unconstitutional law and its threat of crushing liability is causing real and ongoing harm to members of our industry,” Keane said.

NSSF also claims in its lawsuit that the law also infringes on the Second Amendment and chills First Amendment rights by restricting protected free-speech advertising of Constitutionally-protected products that are lawfully made and sold – even when that advertising takes place outside of California’s borders.

Christian Right Gonna Get Yo Momma

In its never-ending rebellion against Greco-Roman/Western civilization and the philosophy of the late 18th century, the international Left has come up with a new bete noire: “Christian Nationalism.”

As part of its ongoing series, called Exploring Hate, PBS has produced a documentary on the subject, “The Rise of Christian Nationalism.” Rob Reiner, aka Meathead from All In the Family from centuries ago, has just flopped with an anti-Christian film, God and Country, with a miserable four-day opening box-office haul of just $38, 415. Meanwhile, David French, the former conservative who appears as a talking head in Reiner’s movie, has just written an explainer, “What is Christian Nationalism, Exactly?” at the mother ship of Woke Stalinist orthodoxy, the devoutly anti-Christian New York Times:

The problem with Christian nationalism isn’t with Christian participation in politics but rather the belief that there should be Christian primacy in politics and law. It can manifest itself through ideology, identity and emotion. And if it were to take hold, it would both upend our Constitution and fracture our society.

George begs to differ.

But Christian nationalism isn’t just rooted in ideology; it’s also deeply rooted in identity, the belief that Christians should rule. This is the heart of the Seven Mountain Mandate, a dominionist movement emerging from American Pentecostalism that is, put bluntly, Christian identity politics on steroids.

Paula White, Donald Trump’s closest spiritual adviser, is an adherent, and so is the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Tom Parker, who wrote a concurring opinion in the court’s recent I.V.F. decision. The movement holds that Christians are called to rule seven key societal institutions: the family, the church, education, the media, the arts, business and the government.

Most atheist Leftists have no understanding of the many and manifest differences between and among Christian sects, foremost among them split between Roman Catholics and the various Protestant sects — Episcopalians, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Seventh-Day Adventists, et al. — once fundamental to early America but now waning in numbers and influence. Consider the wording of Saul Alinsky’s noxious but effective Rule No. 4: “Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

That there is no “Christian church” doesn’t matter to someone like Alinsky one bit; he only sees one Principal Enemy (as the Soviets used to call the U.S.). But it is against this wing of Christendom — as it happens, the wing of most of the Founders who understood they were creating a new nation based upon Christian principles and the wisdom of the British Enlightenment — that the hostility against “Christian Nationalism” is directed.

When the Founders established the protective notion of freedom of religion and the proscription against a religious test for office, the context was the rivalry and animosity between the Protestant sects and Catholicism, and with the understanding that the small Jewish community could be free to worship as it chose as well. It’s worth remembering that the Constitution’s prohibition against an “establishment of religion” referred to the establishment nationwide of a single Protestant sect (or, God forbid, Catholicism) — and yet the states were perfectly free to have established churches: Connecticut and Massachusetts, for example, which were constitutionally Congregationalist into the 19th century.

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WATCH: Biden Says ‘I Wanna Get This Quote Exactly Right’ Before Hilariously Failing

“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is,” said Vice President Dan Quayle more than 30 years ago, mangling the United Negro College Fund’s classic slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Quayle’s mistake was all over the news, the late-night talk shows, and whatever stupid place people used to go to before we had Twitter/X.

With that in mind, assuming we haven’t all lost ours, let us dig into the latest word salad from Presidentish Joe Biden, lovingly tossed and dressed with generous portions of Hidden Memory Ranch Dressing.

“Standing here in front of this portrait [Abraham Lincoln] of the man behind me,” because that’s how being in front of things works, “he, uh, he said — and I want to make sure I get the quote exactly right…”

If you aren’t already thinking that this is when Biden completely mangled the quote he was trying so hard to get exactly right, then I don’t think we can be friends any longer.

Biden continued, reading from his prepared notes, “He said, the better angel, he said, we must address the council and adjust the better angels of our nature. ”

When the better angel of your nature is in need of an adjustment, please take it to see a licensed chiropractor. I’m not sure what Biden meant about addressing the council in this context, but since he graduated ahead of the valedictorian in his top-tier Super Brain Law School class at Syracuse University, I’ll defer to his greater knowledge about such legal matters.

I would like to reiterate before we get to this next part that Biden was reading from note cards.

“And we do, and we do well to remember what else he said,” the alleged current president continued. “He said we’re not enemies but we’re friends. It’s in the middle, in the, in the middle part of the Civil War.”

Lincoln’s words — not Biden’s 40-grit sandpaper approximation of them — were delivered at his first inaugural in March of 1861, about five weeks before the first battle of the Civil War was fought at Fort Sumter. But whatever. Biden means well, except when he’s calling half of the country election-denying white supremacists bent on destroying our democracy.

“He said,” Biden repeating himself and still not mentioning Lincoln by name, “we’re not enemies, we’re friend [sic]. We must not be enemies.”

“We’ve gotten, politics has gotten too bitter,” he concluded for the benefit of you knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, MAGA extremists.

What Biden had meant to say, of course, was this — or at least the first and last parts:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.
Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Lincoln, unlike our current Super Mind Brain POTUS, was an actual genius — and even a poet.

If you think I’ve exaggerated anything Biden said, watch the clip for yourself. Watching it is worse than reading it because, except for a well-delivered flash of humor at the end, my transcript doesn’t show you how weak and confused Biden sounded.

For the record, I’m not laughing at an old man’s misfortune — I’m laughing at ours.

Gun Control Activists Claim to Have the ‘Spirit of the Law’ on Their Side in Bump Stock Case

Which, of course, is another way of saying that they don’t have the letter of the law on their side. The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in Cargill v. Garland on Wednesday, and the fundamental question before the Court is whether a bump stock device is a “machinegun” as defined in 26 U.S.C. 5845(b) because it is designed and intended for use in converting a rifle into a machinegun, which, under federal law, is “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.”

For years the ATF approved bump stocks for sale, but after the Route 91 festival shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, the agency reversed course and banned the product, declaring that its prior determinations did “not reflect the best interpretation of the term ‘machinegun.’ The ATF concluded that the phrase “single function of the trigger” also encompasses a “‘single pull of the trigger,’” and even “motions ‘analogous’ to a single pull; an argument persuasive to a couple of federal appellate courts, but not the Fifth Circuit, which ruled that the ATF’s new definition stretched far beyond what the federal statute in question actually says.

Ahead of Wednesday’s court hearing, both sides are using the press to make their case, with ABC News set to run a report on bump stocks on Primetime Live tonight. The network spoke to Michael Cargill, who’s leading the charge to have the ATF’s current rules overturned, along with bump stock creator Jeremiah Cottle, survivors of the Las Vegas shooting, and several gun control activists who inadvertently helped demonstrate the weakness of the government’s argument.

Steve Kling, a retired Army commander of a small arms training unit and a gun safety advocate for the Giffords organization, said ATF’s reversal reflects a more accurate analysis of federal law.

“The spirit of the law is to prevent automatic weapons, weapons that have a significant cyclical rate of fire, from being on our streets and possessed by just anyone,” he said.

“I’ve fired a lot of automatic weapons, including ones with bump stocks. There’s no question that they’re fun. It’s fun to drive a supercar at 180 miles an hour down a highway. But we don’t allow that either,” Kling said.

Again, a firearm equipped with a bump stock isn’t an “automatic” weapon, no matter how much Kling believes otherwise. And while we may not allow drivers to go 180 mph, we also don’t ban cars that can go that fast (though California lawmakers are giving it their best shot).

That doesn’t mean that bump stocks can’t be banned, but doing so would require congressional action, not an executive branch agency deciding to re-interpret the plain language of the National Firearms Act in order to retroactively prohibit the possession of a lawfully purchased and possessed product.

Michael Cargill, an Army veteran and owner of Central Texas Gun Works outside Austin, cleared his store shelves of bump stocks after the ATF imposed the 2018 ban and surrendered two he owned himself. But he sued the agency in federal court and is leading the fight to get the devices back.

“This is a product that I legally purchased and had it in the store,” Cargill said in an interview at his shop, “and all of a sudden an agency within the federal government decided they’re going to ban this particular product. I said, ‘This is crazy, this is not the America that I know. We’ve got to do something about this.'”

Cargill insists a bump stock is a firearm accessory that does not render a semi-automatic weapon fully automatic and that the ATF overstepped its authority. He’s now asking the Supreme Court to strike down the agency’s ban.

“We need to follow the laws that we already have right now and not venture past that point,” Cargill said. “An agency within the federal government can’t come out and actually turn millions of people into felons overnight or ban a product. We have to go to Congress to do that.”

As the National Shooting Sports Foundation argued in its amicus brief in Cargill, the bump stock ban is hardly the only example of ATF overreach in recent year.

Time and again in recent years, ATF has executed similar about-faces in service of restricting access to firearms with features it had previously recognized to be legal. The agency has tried to justify those efforts by taking an increasingly broad view of the “purpose” of the federal statutes setting forth its important but limited mission and an increasingly narrow view of the constraints that those statutes impose.

Making matters worse, ATF has largely given the Second Amendment the back of the hand, imposing novel firearms restrictions without seriously grappling with constitutional text or historical tradition. The agency is in dire need of a reminder that it is not for ATF to decide which arms the people may keep and bear.

If the Court upholds the ATF’s action here, the decision could not only have implications for the agency’s more recent rules on unfinished frames and receivers and pistol stabilizing braces, but would give the green light for the ATF to rewrite entire sections of the NFA and Gun Control Act to create a host of new gun control laws without a vote in Congress. This case is hugely important, not only for the hundreds of thousands of people who lawfully purchased bump stocks in the past, but for every gun owner in the country going forward. Gun control activists may believe that the spirit of the law is on their side, but if SCOTUS remains true to the letter of the law, which they’re supposed to do, then I don’t think they have any choice but to strike down the ATF’s rule and remind the agency that it’s the role of Congress to create new law, not government agencies.