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In what is likely to become a landmark case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an en banc decision of all the judges in the circuit, struck down the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rule which changed the definition of a machinegun to include bump stocks. Thirteen judges were in the majority, with three judges dissenting. The case is Cargill v. Garland. This correspondent wrote about it previously. Here is a summation of how the sixteen judges ruled. From the opinion: Of the sixteen members of our court, thirteen of us agree...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed down a 13-3 decision Friday striking down the regulatory gun control that banned bump stocks under former President Donald Trump. Reuters reported that the court intimated that actions on guns should be taken by Congress rather than the executive branch. Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote the majority opinion for the Fifth Circuit and also opined that the framers of the bump stock ban did not provide “fair warning that possession of a non-mechanical bump stock is a crime.”

On October 3, 2022, the Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari to two promising bump stock cases, one in the Tenth Circuit, another in the Sixth Circuit. The appeals process for those two cases is finished.Another bump stock case Cargill v. Garland, is in the Fifth Circuit and may tip the balance. It’s being considered en banc and is a well-argued and supported case.The case was filed on March 25, 2019, originally titled Cargill v. Barr.In all three cases, the arguments are not about the Second Amendment. They are about the ability of bureaucrats to make law and the...

On October 3, 2022, it was revealed the Supreme Court refused to review two cases challenging the rule implementing a bump stock ban put in place by the ATF at the request of President Donald Trump. The two cases which had been appealed to the Supreme Court were distributed for conference where decisions are made to hear the case (grant a writ of certiorari) or not on September 12. Both had been rescheduled earlier in the year. Both cases were denied as of October 3, 2022.The appeals process for the bump stock ban has ended.The two cases were: Aposhian v....

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Bump stocks have faded from the headlines. Most in the firearms community have been outraged that a federal administrative agency could make such a radical change in the law, as to ban items the agency previously ruled were perfectly legal, without any action by Congress or the President. In the Tenth Circuit, a legal challenge has been percolating. On March 26 of 2018, the BATFE reversed its previous rulings on bump stocks and issued a rule change that bump stocks would be considered automatic firearms. Over half a million bump stocks had been legally sold and owned. The...

Automatic weapons are unicorns in the gun world. Every gun owners want ones. But thanks to the circus known as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, most automatic weapons and machineguns are prohibitively expensive. And with the recent ban on the bumpstock (even though the bumpstock doesn’t even meet the ATF’s definition of a machinegun) what is a freedom-loving gun owner to do? When you tire of laboriously emptying magazines with one trigger squeeze, when the Mad Minutes get boring, where do you go next? The Gat Crank might be the answer. The beauty of the Gat Crank is...

In 2019, in response to a single criminal act, faced with intense media pressure, resulting in political pressure, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, (BATFE) moved to ban bump stocks. They did so, claiming bump stocks were machine guns, contrary to numerous findings they had made over the last several decades. The new regulation was challenged in the courts. The first case to be appealed to the Supreme Court was filed in the District of Columbia. On 2 March, 2020, the Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari, the legal term to say they declined to hear the...

WASHINGTON - - The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal of the federal ban on bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic firearms to fire rapidly like machine guns. The justices did not comment in declining to review a lower court-ruling that upheld the ban, which took effect nearly a year ago. President Donald Trump said that the government would move to ban bump stocks, following a 2017 shooting in Las Vegas in which a gunman attached bump stocks to assault-style rifles he used to shoot concertgoers from his hotel room. By using the devices, which allow shots to be...

The federal government collected fewer than 1,000 bump stocks during the run-up to a new ban in March, despite estimates that hundreds of thousands of the devices that mimic machine gun fire are in circulation, according to federal data provided to The Washington Times by the Justice Department. As the nation marked the second anniversary Oct. 1 of the Las Vegas massacre, which prodded the Trump administration to ban bump stocks, the numbers offer a cautionary tale on the scope and resources needed to enforce any sort of gun buyback program. The administration cited estimates that 280,000 to 520,000 bump-stock-type...

Full title: Relying on the Same Illogic That Trump Used to Ban Bump Stocks, a New Lawsuit Argues That Customizable Rifles Are Illegal A new lawsuit against the manufacturers of guns used in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting claims that AR-15-style rifles are illegal because they are compatible with bump stocks, which increase their rate of fire. The plaintiffs, parents of a woman who was murdered in the Las Vegas massacre, argue that bump stocks like the ones used in that attack convert semi-automatic rifles into illegal machine guns—a position that has been endorsed by the Trump administration. Therefore,...

The repercussions of the BATFE rule change classifying bump stocks as fully automatic firearms continues.  RW Arms is a company located in Ft. Worth Texas.  The company distributes firearms parts and accessories in the United States. RW Arms had a large inventory of over 73,000 “bump stocks”, when the BATFE changed the regulations and classified bump stocks as automatic firearms. RW Arms joined with retailer The Modern Sportsman to sue the federal government for an uncompensated taking of their formerly legal product under the Fifth Amendment of the the U.S. Constitution. From rwarms.com: Fort Worth, Texas (April 8, 2019)–Fort...

Retailers who had to destroy tens of thousands of bump stocks to comply with an ATF rule change have gone to the court seeking compensation. (Photo: Slide Fire Solutions)Two former retailers of now-banned bump stock devices are suing the federal government for damages they incurred after having to destroy their inventory. The plaintiffs include two companies, Minnesota’s Modern Sportsman and Texas-based RW Arms, as well as two individuals, Mark Maxwell and Michael Stewart, who in all lost 74,995 bump stocks to the ban which took effect late last month. The case, filed in a Washington, D.C. federal court, argues that...

The litany of legal challenges to the federal bump stock ban generated an injunction on Thursday.The U.S. 10th Circuit on Thursday issued a temporary stay of the pending federal bump stock ban set to take effect next week. The stay comes in the case of Utah gun rights advocate W. Clark Aposhian, backed by the nonprofit New Civil Liberties Alliance, which takes issue with how government regulators moved to outlaw the devices last year. As such, it blocks enforcement, set to take effect on March 26, only against Aposhian while his case is in the courts. “Today the Court of...

The appeal by the Plaintiffs against the BATFE in the bump stock ruling has been expedited.  The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ordered the parties to submit briefs by March 4th of 2019. That is extraordinarily fast by U.S. appeals court standards. The original ruling by the Circuit court hinged on the notion that ordinary words are ambiguous, and an agency can reverse previous rulings when the agency decides to do so.  From the opinion: Most of the plaintiffs’ administrative law challenges are foreclosed by the Chevron doctrine, which permits an agency...

Support for banning bump stocks is widespread, and it’s encouraging to see the Trump administration take action on gun safety. But let’s not celebrate too quickly. Presidents can rescind regulations just as easily as they create them, and in this case, the bump stock ban will likely be tied up in court for years. Only hours after the Trump administration released its final regulation, Gun Owners of America announced it would file a lawsuit. To ensure a ban is implemented and protected from legal challenges, Congress must still pass a law banning bump stocks and other similar devices, such as...

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin On December 10, 2018, the Department of Justice published its final rule regarding a bump stock ban in the United States. (The rule can be found at the The Federalist Pages Library section, along with the NRA’s comments on the proposed rule.) The DOJ arrived at this prohibition by holding that bump stocks are machine guns under the definitions of such weapons contained in 27 C.F.R. §§ 447.11, 478.11, and 479.11. But even if DOJ were to have the authority...

I want to point out something that needs to be considered in light of the bump stock ban. Given the wording of the regulation, many reasonably asked if binary triggers would be affected. Leaving aside the fact that the ban is based on a lie as brazen as claiming the sky is green, it turns out the new regulation does not ban binary triggers. From page 83 of the ruling: "The Department disagrees that other firearms or devices, such as rifles, shotguns, and binary triggers, will be reclassified as machineguns under this rule. Although rifles and shotguns are defined using...

Expected Live at 1:30 pm ET: White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders takes questions from the media following Michael Flynn's sentencing and a day after James Comey's second closed-door hearing on Capitol Hill. This is the first press briefing since November 27th.

Discontinuance of Accessory Classifications Effective Immediately: The Firearms Technology Industry Services Branch (FTISB) classifies firearms as defined by the Gun Control Act (GCA) and National Firearms Act (NFA) based on the configuration and the design features of the firearm as submitted by members of the industry. Effective immediately, any requests for a determination on how an accessory affects the classification of a firearm under the GCA or NFA must include a firearm with the accessory already installed. Except in cases of conditional import determinations, FTISB will not issue a determination on an accessory unless it is attached to the submitted...

A Franklin County judge in Ohio has ruled the Columbus City Council ban on bump-stocks is invalid under Ohio law. The ban was passed in May of 2018, as part of an series of infringements aimed at gun owners. From ab6onyourside.com: COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Franklin County Judge has ruled Columbus' bump-stock ban as unconstitutional.The ban was passed by the Columbus City Council in May. The ban was part of a series of four ordinances aimed at reducing gun violence. On Friday, Franklin County Judge David E. Cain ruled the bump-stock ban violates state law and the city cannot...