Posted on 04/02/2024 5:58:46 AM PDT by Red Badger
It's called the Chevron Rule, and it's the prevailing legal precedent. The Congress writes "open-ended" legislation and grants to the agency the power to sort out the fine details for themselves.
There is a case pending that SCOTUS has agreed to hear that will test Chevron. I forget who brought it but as best as I remember it wasn't anyone from the 2A/RKBA community. When listening to arguments as to whether they would hear the case, the Justices appeared to be divided right down party lines, 6-to-3 in favor of overturning.
That and in some states to let you hunt with a rifle during "pistol season". But yeah, get rid of the NFA and let people have SBRs and suppressors without ridiculous registration and licencing.
That didn't go down very well with the SC with respect to the EPA, who got spanked for committing just that sort of abuse. If a rule change creates millions of felons out of the clear blue sky that's beyond the scope of a federal agency and will require federal legislation - at least, because that legislation has to pass Constitutional muster as well. That, incidentally, has nothing to do with the Bruen decision, which is a whole separate criticism of this debacle. The regulation is being challenged on that ground too.
What I'm anxious about is that a Court that prefers narrow rulings may strike the regulation down on the basis of its blatant disregard of the Administrative Procedures Act, wherein it is specified that a regulation may not be presented for public comment and then a different one be substituted in its place, which is exactly what the ATF did. That bad part about a ruling on that basis is that the ATF could simply back up, re-present the actual regulation for comment, and go through the whole dance all over again.
I do agree that the root of the problem is the 90-year-old National Firearms Act, which needs to go altogether. Suppressors and SBRs are not a menace to society and the registration of full-auto firearms has been a cheat since 1986, when it was discovered that under the then-new bill nothing whatever would be allowed civilians that had not been manufactured before that date. Surprise! The NFA needs to go but I have no real hope that this court will rule that broadly. But then I thought that about Roe v Wade, too, and look where we are on that one. So there's hope, albeit mighty slim.
How does an NRA member have more rights than a normal citizen?
We need to stop pretending along with the criminals in the ATF that they have any legitimacy at all. Them and every single arbitrary INFRINGEMENT they are currently killing people over...
You're right.
Read the decision and figure it out for yourself.
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