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howdy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 18, 2018 3:12 pm Fox news reported that the final bump stock law is in effect and there is a 90 days window to get rid of the devices. They must be destroyed or turned in to your local ATF office.

https://apnews.com/6c1af80fb290472c89fb930e223505af

The last paragraph of the article says:

The largest manufacturer of bump stocks, Slide Fire Solutions, announced in April that it was going to stop taking orders and shutting down its website. The remaining stock of the devices is now being sold by another company, RW Arms, based in Fort Worth, Texas.

RW Arms has them here.... for now.... : https://www.rwarms.com/product/brands/slidefire/.

I imagine that they’ll sell all of their inventory, all of which will end up at the bottom of lakes all over Texas. But I won’t be one of them. Not even kidding about it.

jason812 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 11, 2018 3:59 pm

Charles L. Cotton wrote: ↑Tue Dec 11, 2018 3:53 pm

The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Tue Dec 11, 2018 3:43 pm

Charles L. Cotton wrote: ↑Mon Dec 10, 2018 6:44 pm Narrowing the focus to only bump-stocks was masterful, regardless what anyone wants to claim.

Chas.

What would have been the likely outcome if NRA had just left it alone?

A ban on all AR platform firearms. With 58 dead, almost 500 wounded and several hundred more injured trying to escape, this was an event with a political impact far greater than anything previously experienced.

Chas.

What happens when the next one of this magnitude happens and there are no more sacrificial lambs (bump stocks)?

I'm with TAM. Annoyed that the NRA and Trump took the stance they did but am not revoking my life membership or voting other than Trump in 2020.

It would just be nice to know the truth as to what really happened in Vegas.

Charle’s explanation makes sense to me, and helps me to understand why the NRA did what it did. Thank you Charles.

Charles L. Cotton wrote: ↑Mon Dec 10, 2018 6:44 pm Narrowing the focus to only bump-stocks was masterful, regardless what anyone wants to claim.

Chas.

So Charles, are you saying that this is why the NRA took a stance in favor of a ban? What would have been the likely outcome if NRA had just left it alone?

jordanmills wrote: ↑Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:58 pm

The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Tue Dec 04, 2018 4:40 pm I’ve heard rumors that GOA is going to try and litigate this. I wish them luck, but I’m not hopeful.

And that's an example of why i give money to the GOA and not the NRA.

Understood. And ... I want to be sure people understand that I’m NOT trying to slam the NRA. They have done some great work over the years, and if not for them, perhaps we’d have lost ALL of our gun rights years ago. I’m an endowment life member. I’ve donated money. I generally support the organization. I absolutely WOULD understand if they decided to remain neutral in this fight....it’s NOT one they can expect anything but loss of political capital or financial capital for getting involved one way or the other. But I am VERY perplexed about why they have chosen to take a proactive position for banning bumpstocks, instead of simply saying “not my monkeys, not my circus”, and declining to get involved. And that disappoints me. But I am NOT going to bash them. On the balance, NRA has done FAR more good for gun rights than many appreciate. I just wish they had not thrown their name behind this inane plan to ban the stocks.

glock27 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 05, 2018 11:40 am Is there a date set that will make them illegal?

Not positive, but I don’t think so.

Papa_Tiger wrote: ↑Tue Dec 04, 2018 5:39 pm

The Annoyed Man wrote: I’ve heard rumors that GOA is going to try and litigate this. I wish them luck, but I’m not hopeful.

I wish it weren’t so, but I don’t think we’re going to have a positive outcome here, and the BEST we can hope for is that SCOTUS will judge it to be a “taking” and order ATF to compensate bumpstock owners for the loss of their property.

Accounted for in the rule, unless it is just an "oh, so sorry, you (the public) must destroy these without compensation and just suck it up."

The estimate includes costs to the public for loss of property ($102,470,977); costs of forgone future production and sales ($213,031,753); and costs for disposal ($5,448,330). Unquantified costs include lost employment, notification to bump-stock-type device owners of the need to destroy the bump-stock-type devices, and loss of future usage by the owners of bump-stock-type devices. ATF did not calculate any cost savings for this final rule. It is anticipated that the rule will cost $129,222,483 million in the first year (the year with the highest costs). This cost includes the first-year cost to destroy or modify all existing bump-stock-type devices, including unsellable inventory and opportunity cost of time.

AS I read the wording, it’s a “so sorry, you’re just going to have to suck it up” situation. It does NOT specifically mention compensation ... just “loss to the public”, including any costs of destruction/modification and loss of unsellable inventory and opportunity cost. I read that as: “whoever has money in these things, either as a user or a seller, is going to take a loss”. It does NOT mention a specific loss to those who don’t have one - which would at least imply compensation. I think it is a safe bet that this will be a “sorry, you’re out of luck” taking.

...which casts this administration in a whole new light for me. Maybe they were right.... Orange Man bad. He could have easily blown it off and refused to take it up as an issue. He could have said something like “maybe this bears looking at down the road, but right now we have bigger fish to fry”. He chose to take it up. Same as the NRA. They could have simply said, “we take no position for or against”. They chose to take it up. You don’t ALWAYS have to take a proactive approach. Sometimes, doing nothing is the best thing, because doing something about “A” can create precedents for doing something down the road about “B” ... even though “B” wasn’t involved in a mass-shooting. For instance, banning bumpstocks being used as a justification for banning “sniper scopes”.

In the first novel of his “Enemies” trilogy, Matthew Bracken very believably hypothesizes a situation eerily similar to the Vegas shooting (which the book predates by several years), in which a mass shooting with an SKS is intitially used as a pretext to banning all semiauto rifles, and then followed up with a ban magnifying optics, civilian use of “military” calibers, and utlimately, ALL civilian firearms ownership.

If you have never read the series, at least read the first book, “Enemies, Foreign and Domestic” (https://www.amazon.com/Enemies-Foreign- ... 0972831010). If you don’t read the prologue and the first four chapters of that book and make an immediate comparison to the Vegas shooting and what’s happening with bumpstocks....and where this is all headed, you’re blind. Yeah, it’s fiction, but it it is so predictive that you can’t ignore it....especially when the Vegas authorities seem to have gone out of their way to both hinder the investigation and bury evidence in that shooting, and to keep the details as opaque as possible.

Sometimes fiction is just entertainment. Other times, it is written with the intent to wake people up and get them to open their eyes, and Bracken is on record saying that is his purpose with his books. After having first read the book years before, I’ve known since then that it was very plausibly a matter of time until someone did something similar - as part of a conspiracy to begin disarming the public. Vegas eerily fits that bill, and new ATF regs coming down the pike now do nothing but reinforce that belief. As Freud once said, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”. But what is implied in that statement is that, sometimes it is NOT just a cigar ... it is something else. Maybe I am hyperventilating, but I don’t think I am, and I would LOVE to be wrong.

jason812 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 04, 2018 1:51 pm I understand the NRA's statement about the bump stocks. The organization has to uphold an image, maintain membership/cash flow, plus operate in very hostile waters (DC). It would just add fuel to the hatred of the NRA if they were for keeping bump stocks around. That doesn't mean I agree with the statement. Its funny or sad but they (the NRA) are stuck in the middle. To the antis, the NRA is the most evil organization around. To those who believe "Shall not be infinged" means just that, they do not fully support our 2A rights.

I’m actually not that upset about NRA failing to defend bumpstocks. Like I said in my previous post, I get it that there is no political will to defend these things, as much as I wish it weren’t the case. What I am a little irritated at the NRA for - and mind you, I am an Endowment Life Member - is that the NRA has taken a public position against them. I would have been OK with NRA simply declaring that they are not taking a position on bumpstocks. Maybe that’s unrealistic, but that’s what I think about it.

The only way one can logically defend bumpstocks is with the same argument one would use to advocate for the decontrol of fully automatic capable weapons ... and if we had unrestricted access to those, bumpstocks wouldn’t even be a thing. I suspect that those of us who think that bumpstocks should be unrestricted, probably also think that automatic weapons should unrestricted. The problem is that, even among fairly strong 2nd Amendment advocates, there is significant percentage of 2A advocates who do NOT think that machineguns should unrestricted. That probably describes the leadership at NRA, and I suspect that is why NRA has taken a proactive position against bumpstocks.

I’ve heard rumors that GOA is going to try and litigate this. I wish them luck, but I’m not hopeful.

I wish it weren’t so, but I don’t think we’re going to have a positive outcome here, and the BEST we can hope for is that SCOTUS will judge it to be a “taking” and order ATF to compensate bumpstock owners for the loss of their property.

RicoTX wrote: ↑Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:44 pm I don't own a bump stock type device, but have to say it only reinforces my belief that we are losing the war on freedom... not because of the device ban itself, but the ease with which almost all politicians, including the president, wanted it... even though we all know it does nothing but punish honest citizens. What is next? Who knows? In my opinion we are just like frogs in boiling water so to speak. Some of us may realize what's going to happen eventually, but not enough to make a difference and find a way out.

I am of the opinion that they are useless, and I never did want one for myself. I am never going to assault a fortified position with inferior numbers, so high rates of fire are meaningless to me. I’ve always been a big believer in accurate semiauto fire. I care a lot more about being able to double tap than being able to fire a burst. But that changes nothing. Just because I don’t want one, doesn’t mean that I don’t care if they’re banned. I care very much if they’re banned. If they can ban someone else’s bump stock, they can ban my magazine capacity, or my flash hider, or my forward pistol grip, or my suppressor, or my binary trigger (if I had one), etc., etc., etc. It’s death by a thousand cuts.

I get it that there exists no political will anywhere - not even at the NRA - to try and preserve the right to own them. I get it. NOBODY, or almost nobody, is going to stand up for the right to own one. The panic-mongers have successfully sold the public on the lie that bump stocks convert rifles into machine guns. The number of rational voices who are willing to speak up and say, hey, wait a minute, are too few to stop the juggernaut. But that doesn’t make it right. I tweeted a long thread about it this evening: https://twitter.com/theannoyedman/statu ... 86496?s=21

TreyHouston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:29 pm This is very confusing!

It shouldn’t be. The elitists have declared that something we all know does NOT happen, does in fact happen. We all know that a bump stock does not cause one trigger pull to fire multiple rounds ... that what it does do is to accelerate the rate at which single trigger pulls are achieved. But elitists have declared that, no, that’s not what is happening. They declare it so, because they will it so - never mind that the emperor has no clothes. Now, who are you going to believe? An elitist who has never fired a rifle, or your lying eyes?

Misfit Child wrote:

jason812 wrote:If this goes through, what is the government prepared to do when nobody turns their bump stocks in to be destroyed?

The same thing they did if you had an Akins Accelerator and didn't remove the spring or get rid of it. The same thing they do if you cut a rifle barrel to 14" or make a lightning link from an old license plate.

I learn something new every day. I had never heard of an Akins Accelerator until just a few minutes ago. I looked him up and found this story from 2008: https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/mr-bil ... celerator/. Am I correct in understanding that it functioned in basically the same way as a bump fire stock, by using recoil and recovery to operate the trigger against a stationary finger?

Now to learn what a “lightning link” is.

jason812 wrote:If this goes through, what is the government prepared to do when nobody turns their bump stocks in to be destroyed?

How can they be dumb enough to claim "Prevents criminal usage of bump-stock-type devices?" I would like to find out how many illegally converted firearms are confiscated or recovered during a crime each year. I'm talking full semi converted not a bump stock. If the number is more than zero, than the machine gun ban didn't prevent criminal usage did it?

Also, if the ATF already acknowledges that a person can use a rubber band, stick, or a belt loop and their finger to do the same thing, what does this really accomplish?

It “sends a message” ....... “for the children”.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that there ARE automatic weapons that aren’t on the registry. I know of two different people back in California when I lived there, who own unregistered fully-automatic .45 ACP submachine guns - one a M1921 Thompson, and the other a M3 “grease gun”. They were both WW2 “take-homes” that were brought back from the war, illegally, and simply kept secret among family members. The guns were never registered, and as far as the gov’t is concerned, they don’t exist, and were probably listed as combat losses.

There isn’t an existing registry of bump stock owners, and even if the gov’t was able to track down every single credit card transaction which paid for one, there would be no way to account for the ones that were purchased with cash (another reason the gov’t doesn’t want you to have cash). There is also no way for the gov’t to definitively track down the ones paid for by credit card.

• ”Sir, our investigation to account for all bump stocks sold revealed that you bought one from [insert dealer here] and paid for it with your ATM Visa card. We also show that after ATF mandated the destruction or turn-in of all bump fire stocks, you did not turn yours in. Can you please explain that?”
  
  “Absolutely! I sold it at a gun show about 6 or 8 months before the Las Vegas shooting. I didn’t like it, so I got rid of it. I’m sure glad now that I did.”
  
  “Sir, can you tell us anything about the person you sold it to?”
  
  “Not really. I don’t mean to be uncooperative, but you know, at the time it just wasn’t that big of a deal. It was legal to buy, own, and sell one at the time, so I just didn’t think that much of it. I went to the gun show intending to sell it, overheard a guy say that he hoped to find one for sale at the show, and I piped up and said I had one right there in my backpack for sale. I let it go for $100 or so in cash if I recall correctly, which I probably spent on beer and peanuts or something not long after. Like I said, it was all legal at the time. Heck, I didn’t even bother with a bill of sale, since it wasn’t a gun.......just an accessory part for a gun. I couldn’t even give you a name because I never asked, and he never volunteered it. I put my AR up in the safe for a while until I could get around to buying another buttstock for it....which took a while....but I didn’t miss it because I own four of them, and the other two had regular stocks on them, so I shot them until I got around to replacing that bump stock. In hindsight, maybe I should have done a bill of sale and I could have spared you guys a bit of trouble, but like I said, it just wasn’t a big deal at the time. Boy howdy, highlight really is 20/20, isn’t it?”

My guess is that a LOT of them will end up buried somewhere against the day that the flag goes up. Or not. I personally believe that the average rifleman can be a lot more effective with semiauto fire in most situations.

rotor wrote:I posted too. Explaining that bump stocks are not machine guns are a waste of time. They know that. The argument I think is that they will be confiscating private property without compensation. That argument can go to the courts. I don't think they can call that eminent domain.

Soccerdad1995 wrote:I posted as well. In addition to the point about compensation, I called them out on two other things.

They are trying to get around Heller by saying that bump stocks are not "in common use". By their own estimate, there are as many as 560,000 bump stock "machine guns" in existence. Half a million is not "common use"? Maybe not, but I question the ATF's authority and ability to correctly interpret this aspect of the SCOTUS decision in Heller.

The proposed rule clearly states that there are other readily available alternatives to implement bump firing, including the use of rubber bands and even just a finger. They are not proposing to outlaw any of these alternative methods. Therefore bump firing will still be easily achieved, which undermines any potential benefit that they are claiming.

Good job guys. I missed the “common use” angle, but that is surely a legitimate point. However, I think that the unjust taking without compensation angle is going to be more effective.

The “common use” speaks to whether or not bump stocks ought to be banned. I do not personally think they should be, but I also do think that it’s a foregone conclusion that they will be banned. I hope I am wrong, but I fear that I am not. I also think that - just as case law upholds the ATF’s authority to regulate automatic weapons - courts would conclude that ATF is within its authority to regulate bump stocks. The scenario I fear is that, if challenged in court on the “common use” doctrine, ATF would win, and then be emboldened to create regulations against bump-firing a semiauto rifle period - whether you did that with a rubber band or a belt loop. Get caught doing it, go to jail. If the ban does go into effect, I think that it is best to not poke the bear on bump-firing methods. At that point, it would be more productive to challenge the NFA in its entirety.

Also, if challenged on “common use” and ATF wins, they could redefine at will entire classes of firearms. If they get to define what “common use” means, then what’s to stop them from using that doctrine to do away with 30 round magazines, or AR15s or AK47/74s? So although you’re certainly right on an intellectual plain, I don’t know if that correctness will translate to the real world of bureaucratic rice bowls.

However, I think that a legal challenge could be successful on the aspect of taking without due process and compensation.

I left the following comment:

I do not own a bump stock, and absent a change to the proposed ruling, I’m not sure I’d admit it even if I did. Anybody who bought one of these devices did so in good faith that they were legal to own at the time. That good faith was based in part on the ATF’s own prior rulings that a bump stock did not make their firearm into a machine gun, because - despite the untruth in the wording of proposed rule - a bump stock does NOT cause one trigger pull to fire multiple rounds. Rather, all it does is enable very rapid consecutive single pulls of the trigger. I personally avoided buying one of these devices because it seemed predictable (to me) that one day the federal gov’t would determine that bump stock ownership is too much liberty to be allowed. I was right. HOWEVER, as I said, those that did buy one, did so in good faith that it was lawful, per the ATF’s own regulations and interpretations. Requiring those owners to either surrender or destroy their bump stocks WITHOUT compensating them constitutes a taking without due process, and in my opinion it would be unconstitutional. If the gov’t takes or requires destruction of these devices without compensating the individual owners for the material loss, it would be a violation of the 5th Amendment protections under the Bill of Rights.

The 5th Amendment says: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.“

The federal gov’t is taking private property. The claimed “public use” is to enhance public safety by destroying that property. WHERE IS THE JUST COMPENSATION in the proposed ATF rule? I do not see it mentioned in the document.

Although I hate the rule, I accept that the ATF must on occasion make changes to its rules to keep up with changing technologies. But the Constitution DOES NOT CHANGE - except by Amendment - and neither the Executive, or the ATF acting as the Executive’s agent, has the constitutional authority to take private property without due process AND just compensation, when it was purchased in good faith according to then current ATF regulations and rules interpretations. To do so would break faith with the American people, and break faith with the Constitution.

I therefore think that, since the ATF has gone to the trouble to estimate the average retail cost per unit, the proposed rule should be amended to include compensation to private owners for either destroying or turning in their bump stocks for destruction.

Absent that amendment, this proposed rules change lacks any legitimacy under the Constitution of the United States.

Alternative 3—Opportunity alternatives. Based on public comments, individuals wishing to replicate the effects of bump-stock-type devices could also use rubber bands, belt loops, or otherwise train their trigger finger to fire more rapidly. To the extent that individuals are capable of doing so, this would be their alternative to using bump-stock-type devices.

Nice to know that rubber bands and belt loops aren’t being included in the ban.