I’m going to answers Miguel’s question from his last post.
I was fucking amazed that after Las Vegas, Pelosi’s bill didn’t call for an outright ban on semi auto rifles.
Think about that. Really.
In a span of 16 month there were two mass shootings using AR pattern rifles, with combined over 100 dead nearly 600 injured.
The best that Pelosi could muster was a ban on bump fire stocks. Not an assault weapons ban. Just on bump fire stocks and trigger cranks.
That is an amazing victory for our side, that Pelosi knows an AWB would die instantly in Congress.
Yet some in the gun community are choosing to die on the hill of bump fire stocks.
Holy shit. We have an opportunity to buy good will for a major win for our side (see the NRA statement on bump fire and national reciprocity). Fighting that is as bone headed a thought as I’ve ever seen.
For fucks sake, take the comic of the gun rights cake and shove it.
I guarantee if we win bump fire stocks they WILL come back with an AWB to spite us.
Once you pay the danegeld, you will never ne free of the Dane.
Surrendering Poland didn’t prevent WWII. Neither will any surrender here prevent our enemies from demanding further restrictions, nor will it stop their attempts to enact ever more draconian anti-gun legislation.
To think otherwise is Chamberlain-level foolishness. Instead of preemptively caving on bump fire stocks and giving up hard-fought ground, we should be calling our representatives and senators, writing letters, and firing any that blow us off and vote against our civil rights and Constitution.
But the NRA and its apologists aren’t doing that. They’re preemptively ceding Poland.
To put it in another, cruder, metaphor, ceding any portion of rights is like a rapist’s victim offering to give her attacker a blowjob, in hopes of preserving her virginity, putting all her hopes in that satisfying him enough he’ll go away. In anti-gun legislation, poison pill amendments are simply the victim hoping the rapist triggers her gag reflex enough to make her vomit on him, hopefully disgusting him enough to make him go away. She’s still raped, though, and pins her future survival and innocence on the rapist’s actions, instead of fighting back to prevent the rape.
Yes, that is how those of us furious with the NRA and the GOP preemptively offering up bump stocks as sacrifice see this. We are being told to offer tribute to the Viking, to cede sovereign territory, to offer one part of ourselves and our rights to “protect” the rest. We are being told that the Viking conquest is inevitable, that Germany needs “living space,” that it’s not really “rape-rape.”
I tried to see the NRA’s position. Unfortunately, I also saw the results.
I’ll add one more thing. The NRA says the ATF can “revisit” bump fire stocks, but is saying “no ban!” This is either so short-sighted it makes a blind snake look like an eagle, or they’re talking out of both sides of their mouths. If the ATF revisits bump fire stocks, they have only two options: 1)No change, or 2)They’re machine gun conversions. Since they were manufactured after 1986 (or was it 85? Passage of Hughes Amendment in any case), they are therefore not eligible to be registered, and are therefore illegal. Bam, instant ban, and instant federal felony for everyone caught with them.
Blind or lying.
I’m against the bumpstock ban because, as Miguel pointed out, its not a bumpstock ban. It bans aftermarket triggers, too, because you can shoot faster with a $200 SSA-E than you can with a trigger group from a $40 parts kit.
“they WILL come back with an AWB to spite us.”
That’s no reason to do anything about bump stocks as that’s going to happen regardless of what we do on bump stocks.
Though with bump stocks, I think it’s the grand bargaining chip to get SHARE and NR passed, at least it would be if Ryan and company don’t fold like the pathetic chumps they’ve shown themselves to be.
Oh, I’d give them a bump fire law in exchange for the SHARE act and national reciprocity. I’d also insist on a sunset provision.
Lol, the idea that we can “buy good will” is downright laughable. I personally don’t care about bump-fire stocks…but if you think letting them get banned will be seen as “good will” then you’re a bit naive.
It’ll just be characterized as us admitting gun control works for at least one product, and be touted more as a victory over us than a bargaining table concession by us. They’ll use the victory to demonize the NRA just as much as before an try to win more support to their side via their momentum.
If you want to let bump-fire go simply because you don’t want to expend the effort on them…then whatever. You do you. Pick your battles. Can’t blame anyone for that.
But if you think it’ll buy you good will…lol, no. In fact I think the momentum from the victory would be more likely to bring about an AWB than anything else. They’d just characterize it as us saying: “sure, banning bump fire stocks will stop the next mass shooter, but banning the rifles they go on won’t.” They’d then use that contradiction against us to push for banning the rifles.
This exactly.
Yes, this is a hill I’ll die on. It won’t buy us any good will, it will just energize the gun banners with a victory. If they want to ‘make a deal’, then I want ’68 gone. You can make them a ‘full auto conversion’ when I can legally make one with a tax stamp.
Let’s say that the bumpfire stocks are banned. At some point, our opponents will realize that you can approach a higher rate of fire by holding a firearm loosely, or with a homemade device, or even a rubber band. Why? Because of the nature of the semi automatic firearm.
My fear is that when that happens, the opposition would use this ‘bumpfire moment’ as the launchpad for a much more aggressive semi automatic ban.
There is no good reason to support a bumpfire ban, unless they give us something in return. The inaction of not proposing a new AWB is not a good enough reason (nor do I think that us capitulating on it would do anything other than embolden the anti-gunners). If they tacked the bumpfire ban onto the SHUSH Act, or a repeal of the Hughes amendment? That I could accept, despite the reservations that I have towards a bumpfire ban.
Without such a compromise though, there is no reason to allow any erosion of our rights.
Not to mention, that there is no goodwill possible. The Anti-gunners WILL accuse us of wanting to see dead children, so long as we support anything short of total disarmament.