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To: srmanuel

Nuance is being ignored. The system worked as it should.

The case was somewhat unique because the issue involves not the Second Amendment but the interpretation of federal statutes. Opponents of the ban argued that bump stocks do not fall under the definition of illegal machine guns in federal law. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says they do, a position now being defended by the Biden administration.
The full appeals court Friday sided with opponents of the ATF rule. They had argued that the trigger itself functions multiple times when a bump stock is used, so therefore bump stock weapons do not qualify as machine guns under federal law. They point to language in the law that defines a machine gun as one that fires multiple times with a “single function of the trigger.”

Most of the majority also agreed that if the law is ambiguous, it’s up to Congress to address the issue under a court doctrine known as “lenity.”

In a dissent, Judge Stephen Higginson disagreed that bump stocks don’t fall under the federal definition of machine guns. And he wrote that the majority’s interpretation of the lenity principle was too broad. “Under the majority’s rule, the defendant wins by default whenever the government fails to prove that a statute unambiguously criminalizes the defendant’s conduct,” Higginson wrote.


92 posted on 05/15/2023 9:33:38 AM PDT by JayGalt (Convenience is the bait in which the true poison is concealed.)
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To: JayGalt

The fact of the matter is Trump pushed thru a bump stock ban which is lessening 2a rights.

All the other justifications are just that justifying taking away 2s rights from individuals.


93 posted on 05/15/2023 9:43:12 AM PDT by srmanuel
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