Well the Supreme Court allow the Trump Bump Stock ban?

From the sound of it, to me sounds like they are leaning in favor of keeping the ban.

Of course, it goes without saying, if you know me, I would support continuing the ban.

Allowing them to be sold to anyone would be insane.

You don't need a machine gun ( or one that works similar to one) to defend yourself, or hunt for food. I don't see the ban offending Heller or Bruen.

And I don't buy the 'if you ban then, then only criminals will have them'. That's bunk because we know how machine gun regulation has greatly discouraged the proliferation of them. Thing is, regulation at the federal level works.

What say you?

 

given your well regarded expertise in firearms, please explain what makes a bump stock "unusually dangerous" and not in "common use"

what you THINK others need is really worthless in terms of this discussion

 

written YESTERDAY
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/02/27/preview-of-supreme-court-bump-stock-case/

The Solicitor General and her amici argue at length that "single function of the trigger" should be interpreted to mean "single pull of the trigger." But, obviously, this is not what the statute says. If Congress had enacted a statute that instead said "single pull," then the statute would have exempted the WWI-era Maxim and Vickers machine guns, whose trigger is pushed rather than pulled.

As a fallback, the Solicitor General and amici claim that Congress meant for the National Firearms Act to apply to all rapid-fire guns. But this plainly is not true. The Gatling gun, first patented in 1861, could fire 300 rounds per minute, and by the 1880s could fire 1,200 per minute. It is undisputed that the National Firearms Act does not apply to traditional Gatling guns, which are operated by a hand crank. (Electric-powered Gatling guns are another matter.) The BATFE has twice so ruled.

Biden wants to ban semi autos with that nonsense BTW

the author states the case is an easy one and the USSC should strike down the bump stock ban

 

The author is wrong. I would bet you good money if I personally knew you to say they will uphold it. The judges expressed tons of comments on the understanding why it should be banned. Only 2 possibly 3 were critical.

 

The ban on automatic weapons is unconstitutional.

If Trump gets elected, he'll send death squads out across the country to kill anyone who doesn't support him. You'll damn sure need automatic weapons then.

What's really is at question is: can the Executive Branch make laws? It can't. That's what this case will decide. If decided correctly, the ban will be struck because the Executive Branch cannot make laws.

 

As I recall, Heller found justification for the NFA in the Second Amendment: it's traditional to show up to militia muster with guns that are in common use and therefore the Second Amendment does not protect dangerous and unusual firearms. I don't think guns that have been modified by bump stocks are in common use. They seem more likely to be in the dangerous and unusual category (especially since they can be fired at a full auto rate).

 

yet fully automatic hand held firearms have been used by CIVILIAN police Departments for almost 100 years and are thus in common use for lawful purposes in a civilian environment. and that is the proper way to interpret HELLER because if it is limited to civilian use, then the government can ban any new arms technology for anyone but the government and claim the weapons are "not in common use".

if civilian police departments use bearable firearms routinely, then that weapon meets the test.

 

I'm not opposed to banning bump stocks. But I am very much opposed to banning them on the basis of being 'similar to machine guns.' That is not objective. Laws should be objective. I am also opposed to banning them bureaucratically. We should have a say in it. The right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, and regulation/restriction of contitutional rights should therefore also be constitutional. Yes, altering the constitution is difficult, and that's because its supposed to be difficult to infringe on our rights.

I happen to agree with restricting 'area of effect' weaponry like explosive and suppressive fire weapons to military only. But that needs to be clarified in the constitution, not simply up to re-definition by unelected bureaucrats. And the only reason it would be difficult to amend the constitution to preclude artillery and machine guns from 'arms' is because we all know that certain hoplophobic politicians will try to include a bunch of other things in the definition to neuter the right to bear any arms at all. That's not a legit excuse to limit rights via bureaucratic fiat instead.

That being said, the SC has a long history of allowing our rights to be 'regulated' via bureaucratic fiat, seeming less interested in what is actually constitutional and more interested in just what they think we'll let the bureaucracy get away with. And I think most people don't care about bump stocks, so the SC will probably let them stay banned.

Not that it matters a whole lot. The parts that change many semi-automatic weapons to actually fully automatic are very simple, available online, and completely legal to own and sell as long as they're called something else, because it impossible to legally distinguish, for example, an AK-47 auto sear from an uncountable number of other random machine parts that are sold in the millions every day. Firearms, including 'machine guns', are relatively simply machines. Most car parts are more complicated and harder to manufacture than your average automatic firearm or any of its parts. The only 'bar to entry' is knowing which parts you need for which firearm.

 

Of course they'll keep Trump's ban. If it came from Biden, they would have overturned it already.

 

so that means the pistol brace rule is going to get shot down

 

well since every federal civilian law enforcement agency and almost every major state or local police department has automatic hand held weapons, that alone should demand that the Hughes Amendment be overturned along with the 1934 NFA

 

I dont think cops need area of effect weapons either. The national guard is available for the rare occassion that civilian weapons arent sufficient to keep the peace. But I do agree that all weapons available to the police should be available to all other civilians as well. If not, that needs to also be addressed by constitutional amendment.

 

i use the estoppel argument. when a civilian government issues certain weapons to civilian law enforcement-a group that does not have the proper power to engage civilians except in self defense or to protect others, -that issuance is an assertion that those weapons are ideal for self defense in a civilian environment. Said governments should be estopped from then claiming there is no suitable purpose for private citizens to possess said weapons.

 

They are not 'necessary to the security of a free state' so there should be no issue with banning them. Our standing army and state guards have weapons that are much more effective at providing that security.

If they are allowed, then tax the ever-loving crap out of them.

 

They most definitely are necessary!

 

Automatic weapons aren't unusual and are no more dangerous than any other gun.

 

what causes this level of disgust for an item that is almost never used illegally other than the fact that your political agenda appears to be opposed to those who enjoy firearms? EVERY WEAPON ISSUED TO the military and our police are contributing to a free state and thus should be freely available to citizens

why don't you tell us what arms you think individuals have a constitutional right to own as guaranteed by the second. I know what the answer will be but I want confirmation

 

Scalia-after Heller-and I cannot find the exact reference-his former law clerk Steven calabresi told me about this when we met during his lecture in Cincinnati right before Obama care was decided by the Supremes-realized that for HELLER's COMMON USE test to be workable, common use had to include civilian governmental agents. The reason being, say if a new weapon was developed, the government could ban it by claiming it is "NOT IN COMMON USE" but if the government then issues said weapon to its CIVILIAN AUTHORITIES then the test would be met

CIVILIAN law enforcement agencies almost never have

1) belt fed Crew served machine guns
2) rocket launchers
3) surface to air missiles (save the secret service protecting the white house)
4) claymore mines or fragmentation grenades
5) flame throwers
6) Mortars

or other similar weapons that some could argue are bearable by an individual

but CIVILIAN law enforcement officers are often armed with

1) Sub Machine Guns
2) Real Assault rifles (in ohio alone several thousand military surplus M16 rifles have been distributed to county and local police departments)

and those SMGs and Assault rifles are clearly in common use

 

I built a gun deck in one of my kid's bedroom that faces the front yard. I put a muzzleloading cannon in it with a 3" bore. I can take the front yard with canister all I want, if need be.

Perfectly legal.

 

Do you agree with my analysis?

 

'necessary to the security of a free state' is the reason, not the definition. The constitution does not define 'arms' nor does it define which arms are necessary to the security of a free state. This is because it was meant to include all arms. Explosive artillery and rapid fire weapons existed at the time of its writing, though they were rare, new, custom and prohibitively expensive, it would not be reasonable to assume the founders believed that would always be the case. ...which is partially why they built in an amendement system to the constitution, so we could change it according to such things.

What isn't built in to the constitution is an allowance for the federal govt to decree without a vote that we're not allowed to have certain things. That includes arms, drugs and thermonuclear weapons. We of course should restrict thermonuclear weapons from private ownership, but we should do so democratically and constitutionally (I doubt you'd find more than a handful of people who would vote against banning nukes.... that amendment would pass easily). The abject failure known as the war on drugs is the result of 'regulating' bureaucratically instead of democratically and constitutionally, and a 'war on guns' will be similarly failing and damaging to our society so long as guns remain as popular as they are.

Guns (and ammo) are already taxed, and are the bulk of where our wildlife and wildland management funds come from via the Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937. How much more should they be taxed, and for what reason?

 

the sad thing is this-and if you , like me, have spent enough time in this debate-you will see that the main push for gun restrictions are not based on an ignorant but good faith belief that restricting what law abiding people can own will prevent crime. Rather, gun control is mainly a scheme pushed by those who see gun owners as their political enemies. Every group that sees middle class conservative white Christian men as opposing their agenda, almost always adopts gun control.

 

I dont think its even about WASPs anymore. Blacks are the fastest growing gun owner demographic in the US, and it doesnt matter. People in all demographics are increasingly resistant to the govt taking more of their prosperity for 'the collective good.' The collective thus has to get rid of guns before it can meaningfully take more of our prosperity for what it claims is good.

 

no doubt that big government control freaks and would be dictators want to disarm good folks. But most of the anti gun rhetoric i see comes from the following groups:

1) abortion rights activists
2) the homosexual lobby and related groups such as the trans gender movement
3) the feminist movement
4) animal rights extremists
5) environmental extremists

 

Well, a lot of gun owners are anti-abortion. I don't see the logic in trying to ban the rights of others to protect my own, but I do 'get it' as an emotional response...

I see the same, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. You'd think people that believe they're being oppressed would want to defend themselves from their perceived oppressors...

The feminists I've taken out to the range LOVE guns. I suspect they just often dont have anyone offering to take them shooting.

...well these people are nuts, I won't claim to understand anything they do.

You prolly mean CARBON extremists. Anyone that thinks CARBON is a bigger threat than nuclear waste or mercury or microplastics is a prime consumer of 'you shouldn't bother to defend yourself' propaganda.