Guns / Firearms, Justice, Politics

The NRA's Intellectually Dishonest Stand On Bump Stocks, Explained

The NRA hopes you fell asleep during Admin Law.

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If you think the problem is the thing being held on the left, and not the thing being held on the right, we’ve already lost. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)

As I’m sure you’ve heard — because the mainstream media is falling over itself to tell you — the NRA is relenting on a potential gun regulation in the aftermath of the deadly shooting in Las Vegas. The NRA is willing to consider additional regulations on “bump stocks,” which are extended clips that bounce against your shoulder, causing your finger to pull a semi-automatic trigger inhumanly fast, causing the semi-automatic to fire like an automatic weapon.

This is “news” because Stephen Paddock allegedly used bump stocks to enhance his killing power, and the NRA never relents. But lauding the NRA for being open to bump-stock regulation is like lauding a rapist for being open to condoms.

Bump stocks are a novelty modification. Few people bought them until Paddock used them, and now they’re flying off the shelves because gun nuts are worried that they’ll be banned because our country is actually diseased. There are other modifications, like trigger cranks, that achieve the same goal that the NRA doesn’t want you to talk about.

And I don’t accept the Overton window here. I don’t accept that we should be debating whether you can turn a semi-automatic weapon into a functionally automatic weapon. The argument should be that NOWHERE does the Second Amendment say “the right to bear semi-automatic weapons for personal self-defense shall not be infringed.”

The NRA’s greatest trick has always been to compartmentalize every version of a “gun,” and every modification of a gun, into its own separate category, and then force regulators to treat each and every one differently. The NRA, and its stooges in Congress, has made it so merely changing the name of a thing triggers the need for new regulation to stop the thing that is banned under a different name.

You can imagine the anarchy if other machine manufacturers had the same luck: “It says here that cars must have seat belts, but we’re selling SUVs.” “Sure, there are speed limits for drivers, but our iTesla RoadWarp 3 actually has operators instead of drivers, mmmkay? So going Mach 2 down I-95 is totally legal. Maybe if you libtards understood the technology better, you’d see that.”

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But the NRA doesn’t just muddy the technical waters to increase American lethality. It also employs some tried and true legal dodges, and those are coming into play with bump stocks as well.

The NRA wants the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to review whether bump stocks should be legal. Here’s the NRA’s statement pertinent to this issue:

Despite the fact that the Obama administration approved the sale of bump fire stocks on at least two occasions, the National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with 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.

Republicans are taking this “blame the black president” game to comical heights. But let’s understand this fine print:

* “[T]he Obama administration approved the sale of bump fire stocks on at least two occasions…” If you know anything about administrative law, you know that the executive agencies, like the ATF, are limited to interpreting and enforcing acts of Congress. They can’t make new law; they can only interpret existing law. Here, the ATF has said, TWICE, that it does not have the authority to regulate bump stocks under the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act. It is their opinion that in order to regulate these things, they need a new act from Congress (see above re: technical MUMBOJUMBO from the NRA).

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Now, maybe the ATF is wrong about its authority to act. But any time you have a Republican telling you that an executive agency has more authority than it thinks was given to them by Congress, you are talking to a hypocrite who is banking on you being too stupid to spot the con.

* “[T]he National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law.” Again, the ATF has already reviewed this issue and determined that these devices DO comply with federal law. Most likely, the NRA is hoping that ATF looks at it a third time and comes to the same inexorable conclusion, so the NRA can say “bump stocks are in total compliance with federal law and the Second Amendment,” so their perfect circle of death can keep rolling along.

* “The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.” Lie. THIS IS A LIE. The NRA does not believe that devices designed to make semi-automatic rifles function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations, or else they’d be calling for a review of all the things that Stephen Paddock didn’t use that nonetheless would have accomplished his same goal.

Again, let’s look at the trigger crank:

Additional regulations my ass.

If looking at the “gizmos” the NRA is not talking about is not enough evidence of their lies, then let’s look at how the gun industry defends bump stocks when they’re actually up for ATF review. From ThinkProgress:

David Chipman, a former ATF agent, spoke with ThinkProgress Wednesday about the approval of the bump stocks, which he said the ATF approved because they’re “a piece of shit,” but also noted that the inference in [bump stock manufacturer] Slide Fire’s application was that the device would be used to help disabled veterans.

“[This] has nothing to do with wounded vets,” Chipman said. “It’s a total scam.”

Regulating firearms is not incompatible with the Second Amendment. Regulating firearms is incompatible with the gun lobby. We are not dealing with reasonable people, we are dealing with merchants of death.

There’s not going to be an administrative law solution to this until we come up with a better, less insanely deadly, constitutional law solution.

Conservative media are blaming Obama for approving bump stocks. There’s more to the story. [ThinkProgress]

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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