Breitbart – The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is currently accepting public comment on their plans for backdoor bump stock gun control.
On December 22 Breitbart News reported a Department of Justice announcement that the ATF would be seeking to redefine the term “machinegun,” so as to include aftermarket devices that do not convert semiautomatic firearms into fully automatic weapons. As of now, only mechanisms/alterations that truly convert a semi-action into a full-action are governed by the National Firearms Act (1934). The efforts to redefine the term “machinegun” center on new controls for devices that merely “mimic” full auto fire.
The pertinent portion of the DOJ’s announcement:
Those engaged in the business of manufacturing, importing, or dealing in NFA firearms must be registered with the Attorney General. 26 U.S.C. 5801, 5802. When the NFA was enacted in 1934, only a handful of firearms qualified as machineguns, such as the Thompson submachine gun. Over time, however, as firearms technologies have advanced, manufacturers and the public have attempted to develop firearms, triggers, and other devices that permit shooters to use semiautomatic rifles to replicate automatic fire without converting these rifles into “machineguns” within the meaning of the statute. Consequently, questions have arisen about whether these types of devices should be classified as machineguns (or machinegun conversion devices) pursuant to section 5845(b). See, e.g., Internal Revenue Ruling 55-528 (1955) (considering whether types of “Gatling Guns” constitute machineguns); ATF Ruling 2006-2 (examining a firearms accessory device that, when activated by a single pull of the trigger, initiated an automatic firing cycle that continued until release).
ATF has issued a number of private letters to individuals and manufacturers who voluntarily submitted such devices for classification under the NFA and GCA. In addition, ATF has promulgated a regulation that defines “machinegun,” See 28 CFR 478.11, but that regulation mirrors the statutory language of the NFA and GCA and provides no further interpretation.
The ATF’s intention to redefine the term “machinegun” was published in the Federal Register on December 26, 2017. The agency is accepting public comments on their plans for backdoor gun control from now until late January. Read more
SNIP: If you comment at the ATF link, make your comments original. No copy/paste, no form letters. They tend to look at those comments as duplicates and they will be deleted.
“shall make no law”
they just don’t understand plain English !
A one time criminal act should not qualify as reason to re-define the definition.
The statute is quite clear and very specific. The ATF simply cannot legally categorize bump stocks the same as fully automatic weapons; Congress must modify that statute and redefine such firearms. Doing otherwise is regulatory overreach would certainly be challenged in court where, one hopes, the regulation would be nullified.
Organgrinder is exactly right. Yet these same government lackies have a problem with a Muslim ban even though they continuously cause mayhem.
As if by accepting comments will sway anyone up there from what they intend to do anyway.
I actually don’t have a problem with making NICS background checks applicable to bump stocks, just like with the purchase of any other firearm. But the BATF’s proposed regulations to place bump stocks under the NFA Act of 1934 is bureaucratic overreach.
“back door bump stock”–sounds vaguely obscene
Am I looking at this wrong? Background, I have fired government issue m-16 full auto, no I do not remember the serial number. Even properly supported it is difficult to hold the rifle on target when letting her rip. Has everybody at least seen a youtube video of a bump stock equipped AR being fired? Notice how much the flash suppressor is jumping around? At Lost Vegas distances very few rounds would land in the target area. I want to know what really was going on in Lost Vegas before blaming it on a chunk of plastic.
The BATFE is the original lawless unaccountable bureaucratic shitshow, signing statements, secret rulings only released to a formal legal inquiry and not lawful to share (and not applying to competitors), agents semi regularly taking bribes and subverting the NFA process, fraudulently using pistol primers in a rifle to simulate full auto to convict. These people are scum. The ATF needs to go away.
Having shot one, it does not impress.
I can do the same thing with a rubber band through a belt loop. Can’t hit anything with that either.
Half my long guns are single shot, the rest are bolt action.
I’m more of Hathcock than a ‘Rambow’.
What bothers me is all the bureaucrats deciding to write laws.
Want to make laws, run for congress or STFU, eh?
Yeah, ATFE, I’m talking to you, the EPA and the rest of the alphabets in the swamp soup.
Here’s an idea. Just go after the stinking gangbangers and Commie-Jihadi-Deep State Axis (Vegas, Antifa, KKK et.al., BLM, Illegals, Psychotics, etc) instead of the tools they illegally use to kill innocent citizens.
Why they don’t? It would be bad for the Gulag-Civil Asset Forfeiture-Oppression dynamic that characterizes American government.
Would these be real comments or fake, computer generated comments sent by that anti-gun lobby?