Bump stocks being treated WORSE than machine guns ?

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M-Quigley
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Bump stocks being treated WORSE than machine guns ?

Post by M-Quigley »

https://www.whio.com/news/this-gun-devi ... k2qvySaGP/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Dean Rieck, executive director of the Buckeye Firearms Association, said his organization is disappointed there are no exceptions to the federal rule. The government could have allowed owners of existing devices to keep them, for example. Machine guns are banned, but owners of them before laws passed decades ago were allowed to keep them, he said.

The penalty “could be up to 10 years in prison, or a quarter-million dollars in fines, or both,” Rieck said.

“Basically, they’re saying, ‘Give them back to us — hand them in — or destroy them. Period,” he said.
ATF spokesperson Suzanne Dabkowski, who works in the Columbus field division and grew up in Hamilton and Monroe, said penalties will be stiff after the scheduled March 26 ban begins.

“At the point that this goes into effect, that classifies those bump stocks as machine guns, so it would be the penalty for having an unregistered machine gun,” Dabkowski said.

Owners can destroy their bump stocks by melting them, smashing them or otherwise demolishing them. Dabkowski said it is not permissible to “destroy” them in a way that they can be easily reassembled.

The ATF intends to have a program in which it will accept bump stocks from people wanting to turn them in, but those details have not been worked out. Also, some police departments may decide to accept them, but Dabkowski did not advocate turning them in to police just yet, because the ruling is so recent, most departments have made no plans on accepting the devices.

A prudent thing for bump-stock owners to do, she said, would be “monitor” what is happening in coming weeks before destroying or turning them in, because “once you destroy it, obviously, or once you turn it in to ATF, once we figure out how to do that, we can’t give it back.”
The organization Everytown for Gun Safety was pleased with the decision. It had encouraged supporters to submit tens of thousands of comments in favor of the ban and noted in a statement that “more than 64 percent of comments expressed support for regulating bump stocks.”
This isn't "regulating" this is a ban, period.
kcclark
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Re: Bump stocks being treated WORSE than machine guns ?

Post by kcclark »

This woman's video popped up as a suggestion last night. She is a lawyer in ID with advice about your bumpstock. She said the folks at GOA have already filed a suit to stop this. More of my fellow gun owners need to follow my lead and give to GOA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulHQPpOa_Vk
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djthomas
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Re: Bump stocks being treated WORSE than machine guns ?

Post by djthomas »

The problem as I see it is that there are no exceptions to the federal rule because there are no exceptions in the underlying federal law that the rule relies on. The federal law says that no machine gun and/or certain parts manufactured after May 19, 1986 may be registered and owned by a private person. The regulation imposes the ban by classifying the stocks as machine gun parts. As such the test is simple: if they were manufactured after 5/19/1986 they may not be registered by a non-governmental agency.

The ATF can't say "but you have 90 days to register them" because federal law explicitly prohibits their registration. If somebody has a bump stock manufactured prior to 5/19/1986 they might have a case that they should be allowed to register them under an authorized amnesty period, but I suspect that the list of people with standing to argue this numbers in the single digits, if any exist at all.

There's plenty of precedent for prohibiting the continuing possession of something that was previously lawful. Prior to 1922 it was legal to own certain quantities of cocaine without a prescription. I highly doubt that I could beat a possession charge if I had a 100 year old bag of coke.
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