{"id":112348,"date":"2025-09-25T21:08:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T02:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=112348"},"modified":"2025-09-25T21:08:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T02:08:20","slug":"112348","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=112348","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump Can (and Should) End Semi-Auto Import Ban Right Now<\/a><\/p>\n

My first “evil black rifle” was an AK that I built from a kit. Yeah, I know, an evil “ghost gun,” though the term was still years away from becoming uttered, much less mainstream. A gunsmith friend told me to get an 80 percent receiver, a parts kit, and some compliance parts, then we all gathered at his workshop for a day of building AKs, general BSing, and some grilled burgers partway through the day.<\/p>\n

It was an absolute blast.<\/p>\n

We had to get a parts kit, though, because we couldn’t just import completed AKs, even modified to semi-auto only. During Bush Sr’s administration, he banned the import of semi-automatic firearms for “non-sporting purposes” such as those so-called assault weapons.<\/p>\n

My parts kit was a Romanian AK that had the receiver cut in three places with a torch. Now, they also cut the barrels, all because people built guns.<\/p>\n

However, as Trump has set this term as the most pro-gun administration in my lifetime, there’s something else he could do, and gun rights groups should be asking for it,\u00a0as David Codrea notes at Firearms News.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\u201cThere\u2019s something else Trump could do quickly that would not require Congressional approval,\u201d this column reported online last November in\u00a0Donald Trump and Republicans Owe Gun Owners, and It’s Time to Collect<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0Focused on pledges the president had made to gun owners to solicit their votes, the article explored decisions within the president\u2019s power to make that would help make good on his promises.<\/p>\n

What Trump could do, on his own authority, is end the 1989 import ban on semi-automatic rifles pejoratively designated as \u201cassault weapons.\u201d That ban, put in place by Republican President George H.W. Bush, imposed \u201ca permanent import ban on 43 types of semiautomatic assault rifles, including the Chinese-made AK47 and Israeli-made Uzi carbine,\u201d per The Washington Post. The rationale was they \u201cwere not being used for sport as required by the Gun Control Act of 1968.\u201d This approved gun control by a Republican president opened the gates for many states and municipalities to ban military-styled semi-auto firearms nationwide without a peep from the Bush Administration or his anti-2A Attorney General William Barr who would later become President Trump\u2019s \u201cbest people\u201d attorney general during his first term.<\/p>\n

The ban would be \u201cvery easy\u201d to overturn,\u00a0Firearms News<\/em>\u00a0Editor-in-Chief Vincent DeNiro assessed. But how? GCA \u201968 was a law enacted by Congress. The classification of the semiautos was not.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump doesn\u2019t even need Congress to get rid of the unconstitutional 1989 \u2018assault weapons\u2019 import ban, he just needs to order the BATFE to declare all imported semi-auto rifles as \u2018sporting,\u2019 which is what these same models are considered when domestically produced,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0DeNiro explained last year.\u00a0\u201cIf he wants to go down in history as a Second Amendment hero, he can make this happen on day one.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s the absolute truth, but Trump didn’t do that on day one, unfortunately.<\/p>\n

Still, he could do it now. Semi-autos are still imported. They’re made domestically as well. There’s literally no reason for this ban to be in place except to make it harder to lawfully own these firearms.<\/p>\n

More than that, groups like Gun Owners of America, the Second Amendment Foundation, the NSSF, the National Association of Gun Rights, and the NRA should all be challenging the Trump administration to do just that. Lift the import ban. These weapons are, in fact, used for sports–three-gun competition is a sport, as is varment hunting, deer hunting, and so on–and the ban is wrong on every level.<\/p>\n

President George H.W. Bush was not a friend of the Second Amendment. That’s clear as day, and he set the stage for the federal assault weapon ban in 1994 by this action. He made it clear that these particular rifles were too dangerous for regular citizens to own, at least in his view, and as the leader of the Republican Party at the time, it gave a green light to a lot of lawmakers that this was OK.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t.<\/p>\n

It’s time to end this and do it now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump Can (and Should) End Semi-Auto Import Ban Right Now My first “evil black rifle” was an AK that I built from a kit. Yeah, I know, an evil “ghost gun,” though the term was still years away from becoming uttered, much less mainstream. A gunsmith friend told me to get an 80 percent receiver, … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,79,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-government","category-gun-schtuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112349,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112348\/revisions\/112349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}