Trego's Mountain Ear

This article starts with the Supreme Court agreeing to hear a case is known as Garland v Cargill.  It’s a Trump regulation, not a Biden one.  Not that Biden would have disagreed, but we need to recognize Trump’s accomplishments on banning bump stocks.

The bump stock ban has always seemed unreasonable to me – a bump stock is basically a device that lets a semiautomatic mimic full-auto fire by making it easier to pull the trigger quickly.  Since I generally buy my own ammunition, it isn’t a feature that I desire.  I can miss repeatedly with a bolt gun – I don’t need something to increase my number of misses (admitted, my standard for a good hit is simply the X ring – if your standards are larger, you may not reach the same conclusion.

Anyway, the argument that is headed toward the Supremes is that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms went beyond the limits of the Administrative Procedures Act when they banned bump stocks.  The ‘shall not be infringed’ phrase isn’t going to come up.

Then another case showed up – on pistol braces.  Britto v ATF orders a nationwide injunction against the BATF enforcing their final pistol brace rule.  I’ve read the judge’s opinion and it makes sense to me – when BATF wrote the rule, they went beyond what they were authorized to do.  Since BATF broke the rules when they wrote their final rule, the final rule isn’t legal, so can no longer be enforced.  Again, infringement has nothing to do with it – it violated the Administrative Procedures Act.

The pistol brace rule is a little more personal to me – the brace makes it easier to hit the target, so I’m philosophically inclined to like the brace . . . it appeases my internal ammunition cheapskate.  I figure that the issue may come back – BATF argued that the pistol brace made the pistol into a short-barreled rifle, but I figure this ban is out of play for several years – possibly for the rest of my lifetime.

Then came VanDerStock v Garland – this one shot down the order to treat 80% completed receivers as completed receivers, requiring serial numbers and purchase through Federal Firearms license holders.  This new rule was put in without congressional input – and again, it isn’t a second amendment case.  The legal question is basically, how much authority did Congress give the BATF.  The law was struck down because Congress didn’t give BATF the authority to do what the agency did . . . and, since the rule exceeded BATF authority, the rule went down – “improper expansions of ATF authority.”

I’m kind of amazed – back in 1968, when I was 19 and they passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, I didn’t expect to see less gun control rules when I turned 74.  It’s been a good week to watch court news at the national level.