{"id":97666,"date":"2023-11-11T18:41:46","date_gmt":"2023-11-12T00:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=97666"},"modified":"2023-11-11T18:41:46","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T00:41:46","slug":"97666","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=97666","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Like A Machine Gun’ Isn’t A Machine Gun<\/a><\/p>\n

Ever since Las Vegas, bump stocks have been horrifically demonized. Granted, the Las Vegas shooting was horrific enough that it shouldn\u2019t surprise us that it did.<\/p>\n

Soon after, the ATF reversed their decision that they weren\u2019t machine guns.<\/p>\n

That reversal came at the direction of then President Donald Trump. He did that, at least in part, to cut the legs out of an effort in Congress that would have gone a\u00a0lot<\/em>\u00a0further than bump stocks and binary triggers. It could have screwed up any trigger modifications for any reason.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the reason, though, the ATF actually overstepped their authority, so it\u2019s not surprising that it triggered a lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s headed to the Supreme Court and\u00a0Elie Mystal at The Nation has thoughts.<\/a><\/p>\n

On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear another gun case. That alone should make people hide under their desks at school, because at this point in our bloody republic, every time the Supreme Court decides to entertain the gun lobby, more children are likely to die.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The case involves a challenge to the federal ban on \u201cbump stocks.\u201d Bump stocks are a modification that can be attached to semiautomatic rifles to make them perform as fully automatic weapons. A shooter pulls the trigger to fire the weapon, and the bump stock uses the recoil from that action to pull the trigger again and again, resulting in a near continuous rate of fire, just like a machine gun.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The issue is \u201clike a machine gun\u201d and \u201cmachine gun\u201d isn\u2019t the same thing in the least. Especially not in the eyes of the law.<\/p>\n

The ATF doesn\u2019t have broad authority to just create law. It has the power to\u00a0interpret<\/em>\u00a0laws passed by Congress, but it can\u2019t just make up law as it goes.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, ATF Director Steve Dettelbach could just mandate the\u00a0assault weapon ban he\u2019s said he wanted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He can\u2019t do that because there\u2019s nothing in the law that allows for that.<\/p>\n

What the ATF did with bump stocks, though, is not much different from a mandated assault weapon ban because the justification used doesn\u2019t actually fit with bump stocks.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Machine guns are defined as any weapon that fires more than one round with a single pull of the trigger. A bump stock doesn\u2019t do that in any way, shape, or form. It simply facilitates pulling that trigger a lot faster.<\/p>\n

I have never heard a reasonable argument for why a sportsman or a hunter needs to turn their rifle into a machine gun with the use of a bump stock to kill Bambi\u2019s mom. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The only purpose of a bump stock is to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. That is, in fact, how a bump stock was used in the 2017 Las Vegas music festival mass shooting. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Aided by bump stocks, shooter [killer\u2019s name redacted], 64, was able to fire 1,058 bullets from 15 of the 24 different weapons he brought with him to Vegas, killing 60 people and wounding hundreds more. He did this in around 10 minutes.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, I\u2019d guess that no sportsman or hunter is going to give you a \u201creasonable argument\u201d why they need a machine gun for hunting. Full-auto isn\u2019t ideal for deer, after all.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the thing to remember is that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting. The militia clause that so many people think justifies gun control actually makes it clear what the Second Amendment is about.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So whether it\u2019s useful for hunting or not is irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s talk Las Vegas since Mystal seems determined to bring that up. Again, it was awful and no one wants to see a repeat of it.<\/p>\n

However, there are a few things Mystal and people like him need to understand about that whole thing.<\/p>\n

First, bump stocks weren\u2019t exactly new when that happened. There hadn\u2019t been a single mass shooting reported with one before Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

Further, bump stocks just make bump\u00a0fire<\/em>\u00a0easier to facilitate. You can still bump fire with the help of things as simple as a rubber band.<\/p>\n

Despite that, we haven\u2019t had another mass shooting that used bump fire since Las Vegas, despite it making it \u201clike a machine gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

So even that argument kind of falls apart.<\/p>\n

Yet even if it didn\u2019t, that\u2019s not how the law works. Mystal is lawyer. He should know that. He should also see the dangers of demanding that the law be twisted like the bump stock ban twists the machine gun definition.<\/p>\n

No matter how uncomfortable it makes people \u201clike a machine gun\u201d isn\u2019t a machine gun, and anyone who tries to think similarity to a thing inherently makes it that thing is just reaching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Like A Machine Gun’ Isn’t A Machine Gun Ever since Las Vegas, bump stocks have been horrifically demonized. Granted, the Las Vegas shooting was horrific enough that it shouldn\u2019t surprise us that it did. Soon after, the ATF reversed their decision that they weren\u2019t machine guns. That reversal came at the direction of then President … 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":[23,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97666","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=97666"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97668,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97666\/revisions\/97668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}