Opinion
The Cargill bump stock case decision is worthy of celebration, true. But, had the DOJ-ATF not promulgated the ban, the events leading up to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court, proceeding then to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and ultimately to the Supreme Court, would never have happened. There would be no need for the costly, time-consuming lawsuits, for the hand-wringing, and for the righteous rage that arose because of this ban on a perfectly legal semiautomatic rifle component.
So, then, why did the ATF promulgate a rule banning bump stocks? More to the point, who in the Executive Branch of Government at the time ordered the ATF to craft a rule banning them?
To ask the question invites deep reflection on it and the need to secure a satisfactory answer.
The question submitted is the proverbial “elephant in the room.” Many people fail to notice the elephant in the room, and many in the pro-gun community who do know take great issue with it or make a pretense of not noticing it.
But the elephant must be dealt with head-on. We are dealing here with our most important God-given right, without which our Free Republic cannot exist: the right of the people to keep and bear arms. We do not want to see a repeat of this!
The problem is this: The DOJ-ATF ruling came on Donald Trump’s watch, not on Joe Biden’s.
It was Donald Trump who ordered the crafting of the illegal Rule.
Why did he do this? What motivated him? Is there a rational explanation for his action? Is it due to legal or political concerns? If so, does that matter? Is Trump’s action Justifiable? Is it Reasonable? Is it Rational? If not, were there at least pragmatic grounds for it?
Remember, Trump campaigned in 2016 and continues to campaign today on his avid, unswerving support for Americans’ fundamental right to armed self-defense.
But here he was, using the ATF in a manner reminiscent of Joe Biden, someone who abhors the Second Amendment, who is suspicious of armed citizens, and who uses Executive Branch departments and agencies to chip away at the exercise of our most important unalienable right.
The Rule banning bump stocks took effect in 2019. At that time, Matt Witaker was acting Attorney General.
He took over as head of the DOJ after Trump had replaced Jeff Sessions. Witaker was likely not thrilled with the task of promulgating an agency rule banning bump stocks, but he did so as he had been ordered.
Below is the crux of the mess that started the chain reaction, which led inevitably and inexorably to the Supreme Court’s Cargill vs. Garland decision, which redressed the problem.
The ATF website sets forth:
“On December 18, 2018, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker announced that the Department of Justice has amended the regulations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), clarifying that bump stocks fall within the definition of “machinegun” under federal law, as such devices allow a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger. [Note: the phrase ‘single pull of the trigger,’ made to appear that bump stock operation coheres with the Statutory Definition of a machine gun, but ‘a single pull of the trigger’ is not in the statutory definition. The operative phrase is ‘a single function of the trigger.’]
Current owners of bump-stock-type devices must surrender their possession as of the final rule’s effective date (March 26, 2019).
One option is to destroy the device, and the final rule identifies possible methods of destruction, including completely melting, shredding, or crushing it. Any method of destruction must render the device incapable of being readily restored to function. Current possessors also have the option to abandon bump-stock-type devices at the nearest ATF office. ATF advises that “it is best to make an appointment beforehand with the nearest ATF office.”
- The Rule itself is found in the Code of Federal Regulations, an adjunct of the United States Code: 27 CFR Parts 447, 478, and 479
Administrative Agencies are tasked with creating operational rules to effectuate Congressional Legislation under the Administrative Procedures Act. That doesn’t always happen.
Unfortunately, as evidenced here, agencies go rogue over time. Instead of confining their rule-making authority to Congressional Legislation and its parameters, they craft rules that go beyond the Legislation.
The rules promulgated not only do not effectuate the will of Congress but transgress that will. That happened here, and Trump bears some but not all the blame for it or even for most of it.
Trump did not want this Rule, but he ordered it anyway. He did so at the strong prodding of NRA officials, namely Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox, Executive Director of the NRA-ILA.
The NRA has a long history of using bureaucratic rule-making to take the wind out of Congress’ sails when they “had” to pass a new law to correct some perceived 2A injustice.
The Bump Stock Rule travesty rests primarily on their heads, not on Trump’s.
What is the evidence for this? Curiously, that evidence comes not from an inside whistle-blower but from a Left-wing news organization, NBC News.
NBC didn’t report this when you might expect, on December 18, 2018, when the DOJ-ATF posted the Rule to the Nation. It reported this matter on June 14, 2024, the day the Supreme Court released the Cargill decision. Why did it wait so long? The reason is found in the NBC News account.
This is what it said:
“Former President Donald Trump didn’t really want to ban bump stocks. When he did, he knew the Supreme Court was likely to overturn his action.
In a 6-3 decision Friday, that’s exactly what the justices did.
The ruling revealed Trump’s true feelings on the issue after a seven-year political drama, as he accepted the court reversing him, with his spokesperson saying that Americans should respect the decision.
It is possible that the Supreme Court — at a lower level but in similar fashion to its decision to overturn abortion rights — will unleash a backlash that helps President Joe Biden and hurts Trump in their November rematch.
But for the time being, Trump’s strategy for sidestepping a lasting response to the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting appears to have played to plan.
In the immediate aftermath of that massacre, which claimed 58 lives and resulted in hundreds of injuries, Trump found himself faced with a thorny political dilemma.
Shocked and outraged by the murders, roughly 4 in 5 Americans said that the government should cut off access to bump stocks, the style of shoulder-pad device that allowed the killer, Stephen Paddock, to fire a semiautomatic rifle at the speed of a fully automatic weapon. Democrats, then in the minority in both chambers, demanded congressional action, and some Republican lawmakers agreed with them.
Trump was faced with an unpalatable choice: do nothing and alienate mainstream voters or push Congress to legislate a ban, which would infuriate some gun-rights voters in the GOP’s base and highlight divisions within his own party. . . .”
“Taking a cue from the National Rifle Association, Trump used his executive authority to write a Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives regulation banning bump stocks.
‘I went with them,’ Trump said of the NRA in a 2023 interview on CNN. [BOLD added here for emphisis]
Like him, the gun lobby’s biggest player wanted to avoid both a new firearm-control law and the perception of inaction in the face of the Las Vegas massacre. It would be harder to repeal a law than roll back a regulation, and the legislative process is messy enough that a new law might have ended up including other restrictions on firearms.
Top executives at the NRA said the ATF should look at whether bump stocks conformed to federal law.
‘The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations,’ Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox, then of the NRA, said in a statement at the time, stopping short of explicitly concluding that bump stocks in fact do just that.’
It was exactly that language that Justice Clarence Thomas homed in on in writing Friday’s majority opinion. . . .”
Trump followed the gun lobby’s lead in relying on the court to ensure that shooters have access to bump stocks. It took seven years for that plan to come together. But it did.”
See also this NBC News report, published the same day.
These reports do much to explain an inconsistency between Trump’s promises and his actions, but it should placate those of us who might otherwise feel betrayed.
Now that the truth is out, and no one in America can reasonably deny “the huge elephant in the room,” a flurry of other Left-wing News reports have followed.
These include ABC News, Associated Press (AP), USA Today, and many other national outlets.
They are all pointing to Trump’s attempt to back-peddle over his apparent non-support of the citizen’s unalienable God-given right to armed self-defense.
Democrats and the shadowy, powerful forces propping up a cadaver, Joe Biden, have much to worry about. See, e.g., the article in the Telegraph as reposted by MSN News.
The Press and social media blitzkrieg against Trump is vacuous, and it is nothing new. What is new is that Democrats do not have a pretense of positive news to give Americans.
The only thing that manifests is their bitter loathing of every aspect of our Nation: its history, heritage, culture, institutions, emblems, and visible contempt for the Common Man. Quite a peg to hang a hat on!
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