Courts Deny BATFE Rule Making re: Bump Stocks are Machineguns

General Discussion
1

Good 2A News!

Three cheers for the Federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for their recent decision in the case of Michael Cargill vs. Merrick Garland (Attorney General) and Steven Dettelbach (Director BATFE).

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that BATFE lacks the legal authority to define bump stocks as machineguns and to ban them.

Why is this important? Irrespective of whether or not you’re interested in bump stocks or machineguns, this case addresses other significant issues relating to overreach by executive branch agencies, such as:

1. BATFE’s reading of the NFA and GCA to define bump stocks as machineguns amounted to wishful thinking and/or sophistry. The Bureau’s interpretation and rule-making was not supported by the letter of the law. If bump stocks are to be re-classified as machineguns that will take a legislative act of Congress, not an edict from an executive branch agency;

2. Under the Rule of Lenity, any dispute on an ambiguous law that has criminal penalties has to be interpreted in favor of the defendant so that criminal liability is not imposed;

3. Because the revised rules by BATFE apply criminal penalties, the executive branch agency is not entitled to Chevron Deference in creating it’s Final Rules; (Criminal penalties can only be enacted by Congress, otherwise the executive branch could act like a dictatorship, writing it’s own criminal laws and enforcing them as it sees fit.)

4. The BATFE final rule on bump stocks constitutes an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power by an administrative agency.

The text of the ruling can be found here.

This has HUGE implications regarding the propriety of BATFE’s recent creation of Final Rules regarding:

  1. Frames and Receivers
  2. Pistol Braces
  3. Forced Reset Triggers

If the Cargill ruling is allowed to stand as precedent, it means that BATFE will not be allowed to enforce it’s new Final Rules. Certainly this case will be appealed to SCOTUS to determine if the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling will be allowed to stand. THIS IS HUGE.

After years and years of reading through court rulings that incorporate all sorts of sophistries in interpreting the law, it was very refreshing to read this 62-page opinion that interpreted the law so clearly and honestly. It’s definitely worth a read. You’ll find yourself cheering before you get to the end of it.

edit: added Forced Reset Triggers

2

This has huge implications for braces, which is probably why we didnt see the december rule change as expected. Add forces reset triggers to that list also.

3

I think you’re right – the defendants were waiting for the ruling to come out before publishing their Final Rules, with the expectation that the appellate court would support them and they’d be free to drop a new infringment rule set on all of us. I think they are surprised by the appellate court’s ruling, and that it’s likely that they won’t be as bold in passing a new rule set as they had planned on being.

also, thanks for mentioning FRT. I forgot to add that to my list. I’ve fixed that now.

It’s funny, a few hours before I heard about this ruling I was looking at ATF Worksheet 4999 regarding the pistol brace scoring system.

As I was looking through that worksheet I kept thinking how capricious and arbitrary the scoring system was, and how none of the criteria that were used in the scoring system were even mentioned in the text of the NFA. That form is clearly an example of an executive branch agency fabricating it’s own rules to be used in place of legislatively passed laws. It’s hard for me to imagine how an agency can be permitted to make up rules like that. The Cargill decision makes it pretty clear that the agencies have overstepped their authority.

4

This better come up when IL gets sued.

5

Exactly, a small group of basic educstion humans trying to control the lives of a nation. Lmao what a joke, nobody controls my life. Especially not pathetic people from a government.