It is about the power of the regulatory state. And that power has recently come from what Justice Kennedy once called "reflexive deference" to federal agencies.
Kagan is a big fan of deference to federal agency decisions, saying this in the
oral arguments about Chevron deference: ... what Chevron says is now there are two possible decision-makers, there's the agency and there's the court, and what we think is that Congress would have preferred the agency to resolve this question when congressional direction has -- cannot be found because of the agency's expertise, because of the agency's experience, because the agency understands how this question fits within the statutory scheme. ... Of course, she turned out to be talking about deference ONLY to their most recent decision, not the previous 15 times they said that bump stocka were not machine guns. Those were just mistakes. Oops. By the way, anyone who relied on those mistakes has been a felon this whole time.
By the way, anyone who relied on those mistakes has been a felon this whole time. This ^
I have seen no one, media or otherwise, question President Trump about the bump stock ban. No "any regrets?", no "Would you direct ATF to review and rescind their classification of a bump stock as essentially a machine gun"? Nothing.
President Trump is right on several issues. He's wrong on bump stocks, and just stubborn enough to not admit he used administrative power - deep state power - to ban them.