Free Republic

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...

State police were shocked to find that after banning bump stocks and threatening violators with 5 years in prison, not a single resident has complied. The state of New Jersey has become the latest to ban bump-stocks for firearms, and despite strict threats to owners who refuse to turn their newly illegal devices over to police, not a single resident has complied with the new law. The legislation banning the popular A-15 accessory, Senate Bill 3477, went into effect immediately after it was signed into law by Gov. Chris Christie in January, and it gave residents 90 days to “voluntarily...

he Department of Justice (Department) proposes to amend the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives regulations to clarify that “bump fire” stocks, slide-fire devices, and devices with certain similar characteristics (bump-stock-type devices) are “machineguns” as defined by the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) and the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), because such devices allow a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger. Specifically, these devices convert an otherwise semiautomatic firearm into a machinegun by functioning as a self-acting or self-regulating mechanism that harnesses the recoil energy...

Videos: How to Bumpfire Effectively without a Bumpfire Stock! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIC8SMttjjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9fD_BX-afo No need for a Bumpfire stock. Amazingly fun! Accuracy is naturally compromised, though. Short handgun cartridges have the highest cyclic rate, since less bolt travel is needed. Bumpfiring is 100% legal, and safe in a properly maintained modern sporting rifle. Some gun ranges do not like it, though, because they feel you don’t have adequate control of the firearm. I am sure that could well be the case of you bumpfired a cartridge anywhere from .308 NATO on up.

Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who was among the first to call for a ban on the devices last year, signed legislation Tuesday to outlaw bump stocks in Washington. Inslee applied ink to SB 5992, which makes it illegal to manufacture or sell a bump stock in the state after July and sets a one-year “buy back” program into effect before possession of such devices would become unlawful. The bill passed the Democrat-controlled Senate 31-18 and the House 56-41. “Devices that turn legal guns into weapons of war have no place in the hands of civilians in Washington state, and...

1.Trump Told Sens. Pat Toomey and Joe Manchin They’re Scared of the NRA2. Trump: ‘Take the Guns First. Go Through Due Process Second’3. Trump Encourages Everyone To Throw Everything Into The Bill. . . everything except concealed carry reciprocity.4. Trump Blames ‘The Video Games. The Movies. The Internet Stuff’5. Old Man Yells At Cloud...Sen. Chuck Grassley ratcheted up Trump’s rant against violence in movies a notch, or twelve.6. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Face... Feinstein leapt for joy all throughout the meeting. At one point, she appears to have jumped several inches up from her seat and affectionately jabbed President Trump with...

Bump stock prices have spiked following President Trump's directive on Tuesday that the Justice Department draft regulations to ban the devices. Bump stocks can be used to allow semi-automatic guns to fire at speeds similar to automatic guns. After Trump’s proposed ban, bump stock prices quickly rose on the firearms auction website Gun Broker, Bloomberg reported. Some bump stocks were being listed for anywhere from just above retail prices of less than $200 to as much as $1,000 with some listings having a tag that said "Get them while you can," according to Bloomberg. Trump’s decision on bump stocks...

The media frenzy over the mass murder in Las Vegas has died down faster than any other such story I have seen in the last two decades. The push for legislation to ban “bump stocks” has also died down.  It has not stopped. As expected, the enemies of an armed population are using “bump stocks” as a vehicle for much broader bans. In Illinois, the last state to pass a concealed carry permit law, the Democrats are looking to ban as many as half the guns in Illinois with the broadly worded measure.Nearly all semi-automatic firearms would fit under...

A laptop computer recovered from the Las Vegas hotel room where Stephen Paddock launched the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history was missing its hard drive, depriving investigators of a potential key source of information on why he killed and maimed so many people, ABC News has learned.

A Slide Fire bump stock in action. (Photo: Slide Fire/Facebook) The association representing current and former ATF employees has pushed back against critics blaming the agency for approving bump stocks. The ATF Association said the agency “does not have the legal authority to regulate” bump stocks, which allow semi-auto rifles to mimic full-auto fire. “The bump slide, and several other similar after-market accessories that increase the rate at which a shooter can pull the trigger, are engineered to avoid regulation under Federal law,” said Michael Bouchard, ATFA president, in an open letter last week. “The notion that ATF chose not...

Sometimes in the rush “to do something” after a tragedy, politicians put forward bills that could easily cause more harm than good. The legislation being put forward to ban “bump stocks,” a firearm accessory that uses the recoil of the semi-automatic gun to fire more rapidly, might end up banning all semi-automatic guns.

Since the carnage in Las Vegas, there's been a lot of talk on TV and commentary in print about gun control. Not just any gun control of course, but "reasonable" and "common sense" gun control. But since words matter, it matters how you define "reasonable" and "common sense." And on this, liberals and conservatives might as well be inhabitants of two different planets. As Daniel Henninger succinctly put it in his Wall Street Journal column: "Progressives embrace the benign, while conservatives fear the malign. Liberals say, give peace a chance. Conservatives say, Annie, get your gun." To that I'll add,...

Police have dramatically changed their account of how the Las Vegas massacre began on Oct. 1, revealing Monday that the gunman shot a hotel security guard six minutes before opening fire on a country music concert — raising new questions about why police weren’t able to pinpoint the gunman’s location sooner. Officials had previously said that gunman Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., shot Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos after Paddock had unleashed his deadly volley at the Route 91 Harvest festival, an assault that began at 10:05 p.m. and left 58 people dead, with hundreds more injured. They...

You can’t make this up. CNN attempted to explain to viewers how a “bump stock” works, but the animation of the AR-15 doesn’t even include a bump stock. CNN did give the rifle a grenade launcher and suppressor, however.

“It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”  — Thomas Sowell (@ThomasSowell) October 5, 2017 I’m pressed for time because we’re cleaning and packing today for our trip back to Michigan, so I asked Little Mo - Little Mo, manning the bar at the MOTUS Twilight Nocturne Loungeto work on a post for today. He said he would but he wanted me to {{{POOF}}} the NRA link in my sidebar because of their announced support of the “Bump Fire Stock” ban. Little Mo...

By now, you all know the news, the National Rifle Association is asking for a federal review of bump stocks that use recoil to increase the rate of fire for a semiautomatic weapon. It doesn’t convert the firearm into an automatic weapon, however, which I’ve seen some politicians and pundits say over the airwaves. That’s false. Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon had a good description of the bump stock accessory: You see, bump firing is a shooting technique which enables a shooter to repeatedly engage the trigger of a semi-automatic firearm, utilizing the assistance of the recoiling produced...