Re: 5th Circuit Strikes Down Bump Stock Ban

BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

BTR1701 <no_email@invalid.invalid> wrote:

https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/5th-circuit-court-of-appeals-strikes-down-trump-bump-stock-ban/

A Trump administration ban on bump stocks-- devices that enable a shooter
to rapidly fire multiple rounds from semi-automatic weapons after an
initial trigger pull-- was struck down Friday by a federal appeals court in
New Orleans.

The ban was instituted after a gunman perched in a high-rise hotel using
bump stock-equipped weapons massacred dozens of people in Las Vegas in
2017. Gun rights advocates have challenged it in multiple courts. The 13-3
ruling at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest on the issue,
which is likely to be decided at the Supreme Court.

This case was appealed to the Supreme Court by the government, and accepted
because of the circuit split. Garland v. Cargill

Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, siding against the
government and in favor of Michael Cargill, the gun store owner who had
turned in two bump stocks to ATF to have standing to sue to have the
regulation overturned.

This is great news. The ban was struck down not on some technicality,
but on the basis that the law says what it says and the BATF can't just
decide it wants to 'interpret it' to mean something entirely different
to conform to the politics of the moment and make instant felons out of
hundreds of thousands of citizens who legally bought expensive equipment
that the government refuses to reimburse them for while at the same time
requiring them to surrender it to law enforcement. (Seems like there
would have been a great 5th Amendment claim here as well as the 2nd
Amendment claim.)

Is this because Cargill "voluntarily" turned in his bump stocks to ATF
and therefore it wasn't a taking? I don't blame the guy for doing it
"voluntarily" as he would have been subject to arrest and criminal
charges, which is grief and massive expense he didn't need.

The Court ruled that the BATF has no authority to make
or amend law. Only to enforce the laws as passed by Congress.

I thought I read that in the Constitution somewhere.

Why did no one brief on violation of the APA? Would that have meant the
appeal would have been to the federal circuit for government and not 5th
circuit, so it was a matter of appellate strategy?

This is the slap down we've been looking for, not just for BATF, but a
whole host administrative agencies who have been acting like
mini-legislatures for way too long now.

I don't think Thomas touched Chevron deference here.

Sotomayor is getting all the love from the corporate legacy media today
for her unhinged dissent: "When I see a bird that walks like a duck,
swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck," she
says.

Well, Sonia, coots, grebes, and loons are all birds that look like ducks
and are commonly mistaken for ducks but they're indisputably not ducks.

Ok. You made me look it up. Did she literally put it in dissent, and now
future law students have to learn the "duck test"?

This is the "duck" in question.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Vaucanson_duck2.gif

A French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a mechanical duck that
could eat and then (gah) eliminate.

The phrase has been getting the reasoning wrong all these centuries!

Words matter and it's rather appalling that a Supreme Court justice of
all people would insist otherwise.

Congress has defined "machine gun" under U.S. law and only Congress gets
to change it.

The case hinged upon statutory interpretation and not the Second
Amendment. In fact, in Alito's concurrence, he wrote that Congress could
amend the 1934 law banning the use of a rapid-fire device with a
semiautomatic rifle and there would not be any material difference.

The difference is that Congress didn't amend the statute. ATF did and
ATF has no legal authority to do so.

Meanwhile, as his son was being convicted of violating federal gun laws,
Biden was ranting incoherently before a pro-confiscation group "Who in
god's name needs a magazine that can hold 200 shells?"

I think that would be heavy, awkward, impractically large. You'd need
some sort of mounted weapon.

Pretty sure no one's asking for that, Joe. But regardless, it's called
the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Needs. We citizens aren't required
to demonstrate a need to the government before we exercise our
guaranteed rights.

I still don't see how the shooter can aim a semiautomatic weapon so
equipped, since subsequent trigger pulls are during recoil.

I fired a bump-equipped rifle once. It's not any harder to aim than a
firing a fully-automatic rifle. They both tend to ride up while firing
and the shooter needs to compensate for that. You do that by firing 2-4
round bursts and reacquiring the target, not the mag-emptying spray of
bullets that fill Hollywood movies and TV shows.

Didn't the Las Vegas shooter just spray bullets, or was he aiming at
specific victims?