Out On A Limb

Despite what happened in Vegas, I still think the correct course of action is to violently oppose any attempt to ban bump-fire stocks.

That we should work to get the gun laws rolled back to 1933.

That carry of most any kind should be unlicensed.

Yes, I think that we should be able to buy a machine gun no more problem than buying milk.

There's a few products out there that really only exist because of the NFA.

Firearms like the Remington TAC-14 exist in their exact form because there's an interest in short-barreled shotguns.  The reasons that it's not considered either a Short-Barreled Shotgun or an Any Other Weapon are arcane and defy common sense.  C'est la loi!

Bump-stocks are another thing like this.  Deep down, there's people who want a machine gun but will never be able to afford one.  The same arcana that keeps a TAC-14 from being a Title II gun also keeps a Slidefire from making an AR a machine gun.

Someone who's not versed in this arcana sees sawed off shotguns and machine guns!

I keep hearing about how we can't even find the political capital to reopen the registry for new machine guns, how then will we find the capital to explain to the layman why bump-stocks aren't machine guns?

There's definitely a component of, "if they could understand, we wouldn't need to explain; but since we do need to explain they can't understand."

So we find ourselves, once again, in the lands of pragmatism.

Minimizing the damage.

Trying to inject spines into a famously invertebrate life-form; the Republican Congress Creature.

Shall we be honest about it and accept that the people who invented the bump-fire stocks were actually attempting to exploit a loophole in the law and make new machine guns?

We've been at this so long we don't recognize an actual loophole when we trip over it because people have been using the term wrong for such a long time around gunshows.

Well, I hate to break it to everyone, but the first reaction of legislators to a loophole exploit is to pass laws closing it off.  That's what we're going to have to fight here.

How shall we write this law to close the loophole without also banning semi-automatic guns?  I've read Dianne Feinstein's proposal, it will effectively ban semi-autos.  What's our counter proposal?

Do we have the capital to weather it out until the heat dies down and pass nothing?

To have ATF look at the issue and say, "nope still not an MG as defined by law"?

If not, why don't we have that kind of clout? Because I know we vote.