Is And Ought

What is and what ought to be are not always the same.

Machine guns ought not be banned because The Constitution, as amended, says "shall not be infringed."

Yet, machine guns are, effectively, banned.

The plain meaning of The Constitution and The Bill of Rights is clear and supported by copious historical materials.

But...

Machine guns are still banned.

Banned because we cannot get a case to be accepted at a high enough level to get a ruling which strikes down the 1934 Gun Control Act.

It's difficult to get a judge to even allow an attempt at a 2nd Amendment defense, let alone get the case to proceed.  Many times a 2nd Amendment challenge to a law is denied standing.  No standing, no case.  No case, no ruling.  Status quo maintained.

That is what is.

Such guns ought not be banned.

If they weren't banned (h/t Mr Heins) then there wouldn't be bumpstocks.

If machine guns weren't banned we might just have more (actual) assault rifles in circulation and, maybe possibly, more crime associated with them than with garden variety semi-auto clones.

There was some rare, but high-profile, crime with guns like Thompsons during the 1920's which got us the (unconstitutional) law in the 1930's.  If the National Firearms Act (NFA) had not been passed, we might have seen...  Might...  It's all speculative.  Crime with long guns of any type is nearly at the statistical noise level, despite mass shootings like Las Vegas and Parkland High.

A fact that sticks out about such guns is how long it took Auto-Ordnance to sell their initial stock of Colt-Made guns.  There just wasn't a lot of demand for rock-n-roll when the ban took effect.

It's also clear from studying the events leading up to the passage of the NFA that a handgun ban was what they were aiming at, since much of the NFA is geared towards preventing a long gun from being made handgun-like enough to replace a handgun.

Plus the high-profile crime with such guns ended more from the end of prohibition than from the banning of the weapons used.

A little mentioned fact about the high-profile crimes of several of the notorious criminals is their source of weapons wasn't a legitimate sale, but theft from government and military armories.

There's still high-profile crime committed with guns to this day.  They're just not commonly machine guns.  Just like back when you could mail-order one and the only barrier to ownership was getting the money together, actually.

Remember what I said about demand being low when access was easy?

Nothing creates interest in something like the government announcing they're going to take it all away.

In 1991 I was the weirdo who "Thagified" his Mini-14 to be more military rifle-like.  Until 1994 me and my friends, plus a bare handful of others, were the only ones buying such guns in and around Ames, Iowa.  We didn't buy near enough stuff to keep our local gun shop open, so something else was selling, no?

Then, suddenly, in 1994 there were lots of ban-compliant versions of several military style rifles on the shelves.  The AWB sparked an interest and created a demand which didn't exist prior.  This led to an explosion of demand in 2004 when said ban expired.  Many of us went from owning A gun like that to many guns like that.  Lots of the more Fudd-like gun owners went out and grabbed an AR and discovered it had a lot of utility.  Now the AR is the most popular and most widely owned long arm in The United States.

But banned makes demand.

Most people become acutely aware that their semi-auto M4gery is neutered by lack of a happy switch.  Some look into getting a registered, transferable M16 and hit the "HOW FUCKING MUCH?" wall.

The price point on the supply curve is far above the demand point.  But that doesn't mean zero demand.

Bumpstocks and Hellfire triggers are the means to supply this demand at a lower price point so supply and demand curves meet at the customer.  They do this by carefully examining what the law says and creating a mechanical solution which isn't mentioned in the definition of the law.

Which means we have to correctly state how a bump stock works.

A bump stock is a sliding stock with a short travel.  To make them work you need to to three things.  With your firing hand you need to pull the stock into your shoulder and pull the trigger.  With your opposite hand you need to pull forward on the gun.

This slides the stock all the way out.

Recoil forces the rifle back and slides the stock in.  This causes the trigger to retreat from the firing finger far enough for it to reset the action and when the off-hand pulls the gun forward again, the trigger is pushed against the firing finger and fires the next shot.

It's still firing semi-automatically!  You've just changed how you're pulling the trigger.

It's astonishing to me how few people there are who can describe what's going on with a bumpstock.

All of this brings us, great-circle route and wall of rambling text to their imminent ban.

A regulation promulgated to an unconstitutional law in violation to the separation of powers.

Again, to be honest.

Maybe we'll get a judge who can see that regulations, the way they're done nowadays, is a violation of the separation of powers and strike this regulation down in a manner that allows us to cite it to kill more regulation.

We probably won't, but it'd be nice.