ATF: No bump stocks used in a crime
In response to a FOIA request, ATF responds. Since this runs counter to the information about the Vegas shooting, it should make for even more conspiracy theories. Or it’s because ATF wasn’t allowed to inspect those guns.
May 2nd, 2019 at 7:44 pm
The author of that piece can go funt himself.
May 2nd, 2019 at 7:46 pm
CRAP, wrong article. Delete my posts, please.
May 3rd, 2019 at 1:04 am
Irrelevant. Hammers are used in crimes, but no one is calling for restrictions on hammers…yet. Once we’ve learned to call BS on this notion of deodands, rather than engaging the superstitious in a pretend-serious conversation over what model of weapon was or was not used by criminal X, maybe we can begin to instill some reason into the debate.
Authoritarians went after bump stocks because that represents a little piece of the second amendment that they can chip off, making some progress toward rendering the “masses” more vulnerable to their shenanigans. If that means lying about a bump stock being used in a crime, they’ll do it. It works because there are still some very suggestible folks who believe in deodand law, but I’m not for a second going to argue over who used what in a crime because that’s taking the bait and distracting from the truth of liberty verses victim disarmament.
They tell lies only because we’re willing to take those and shiny lures and swallow them. If the lies had no such power to distract us, if we were anchored into the bedrock of truth, they wouldn’t use lies. That might put the ILA and the “freedom fund” or whatever out of business, but it would benefit everyone else.
May 3rd, 2019 at 9:44 am
By slimy precedent (and slimy president! 🙂 ), it depends on what the meaning of “is” is.
While the banning of MG’s is itself a 2A infringement, it is one that has been accepted, even embraced and become a profit machine by some on “our side”.
So if it has been decided that these junk accessories amount to a conversion to one, which it apparently has, then that is the basis for the ban, and one that like MG’s has been widely accepted, partly because they are junk and it seems a harmless “chip” off 2A as Lyle says, but the cynic in me thinks they might also amount to another profit niche for some (hey they turned $500 guns into $5000 ones, why not $50 stocks?)
Not defending the stupidity, quite the opposite, just analyzing it a bit. Might even be a setup for the SCOTUS of the 20’s coming to revisit said stupidity of the 30’s past. Hope springs eternal.
We do face a more immediate and serious threat that I don’t trust the current clown-show that is the NRA to sufficiently understand let alone defend, which is the major move that is stated and presented so stealthily and innocuously that many on both sides say, “Well golly, yeah, that sounds reasonable.” and that is the historical and specific exemption of private firearms transactions from gov. interference and restriction, what I call the NPA (National Private Armory) which currently consists of an inventory estimated of at least 300 million which is outside their reach and control.
Can there be any doubt that the entire point and real agenda of that is defacto registration? Don’t let them do that.
May 3rd, 2019 at 7:23 pm
An idiot is an idiot. Plain and simple. If you get through life by being an idiot, more power to you. I can’t seem to do that.
May 7th, 2019 at 11:20 am
@JTC: The MG ban has not really been a good thing for anyone in the way that you suggest.
Yes, there are a small number of people who have done well in the business of selling them, and a slightly larger number of people who have cashed in on the increasing market prices, but the market as a whole has suffered.
The vast majority of dealers selling MGs aren’t making a profit, because there aren’t enough of the guns, there isn’t enough margin in them, and prices are high enough that they don’t turn over fast enough. If Hughes went away, we’d see a HUGE boom in the manufacture, sale, and transfer of MGs, and many dealers would reap HUGE profits from them, in ways that aren’t possible today: Pretty much every dealer could easily sell a few dozen $500-2,000 MGs annually, where most can’t sell any $10,000+ MGs.
May 7th, 2019 at 2:09 pm
HSR47, having been one of that vast majority of dealers for many years, your bottom paragraph is beyond question.
But the statement at the top is wrong because the “small number/slightly larger number” you reference after that while factually accurate are made up largely of investment entities which themselves are made up largely of esq’s and other opportunists who would be very unhappy to see prices crash, very opposed to anything that would cause that to happen…and who also represent experienced lobbying power against it.
The old BC cartoon goes like this…caveman customer asks caveman pawnbroker “what gives things value?” Pawnbroker answers “rarity.” And while the customer guesses gold is at the top of the list and the pawnbroker (actually correctly) responds with the punchline, that “no, kept campaign promises are at the top.”, the truth is that any item that is in demand and that has its supply limited by any means becomes rare whether in fact or in perception and prices -if not actual values- increase.
Do you doubt for a minute that throwaway bumpfire devices that were (and are) effectively worthless are being actively protected by gov permission slips and added to the “collections” and “curated” by the same groups that hold MG’s not for fun but purely for profit? I don’t.