Shall Not Be Questioned

A very informative article over at The Hill for how ATF is to proceed with this, from someone who understands administrative law. As I noted when all this started, ATF uses does this stuff by policy with determination letters. If this goes through, it will be a regulation, which is harder to change. There is a whole rule making process, which this article describes.

I’m told by people in the know that a bump stock ban was coming one way or another. It was just a question of whether or not it would be a narrowly tailored ban, or a broad ban that put all semi-automatic firearms at legal risk. I personally do not wish to see what a hostile administration could do with a law that works according to “rates of fire.” As I’ve learned debating people on this, “rapid fire” is whatever rate of fire the person arguing with you is uncomfortable with.

The thought has occurred to me that gun rights did better in the first two years of Obama’s term than we have so far after a supposedly stunning election upset. How did we get here, and what factors are working against us. I have a few things:

• Bloomberg by far is the biggest factor. I’d follow that closely by Obama’s organization. Between them there is a lot of money, smarts, and organizational ability available to promote gun control. Those things are very important.
• Trump is a highly divisive figure and is about the best lightning rod that the Dems could have asked for. While I think it’s true that any candidate who beat Hillary would have been Hitler, Trump galvanizes people in a way I’ve seen from no other President. People on the right didn’t much like Obama, but even Obama wasn’t the lightning rod Trump is. People generally liked Obama even if they hated his policies. Trump isn’t getting the same consideration.
• Our activists are getting old and tired. They are not being replaced by people with youthful energy. If you look at analysis of the March for your Guns, the other side actually has the same problem. The general trend, if you ask me, is that millennials are far more removed from traditional civic life than past generations. I actually think millennials are more civic minded than my generation, but their views on civic life are very different. They are far less cynical than my generation, but they are also far more naive.
• Decline in hunting. For all the bullshit about the Fudds you hear, those guys are really the minority of hunters. The fact is that most hunters support gun rights, even if they don’t hunt with the stuff you and I like to shoot with. Hunters are a natural and large base for the gun rights movement, and the idea that we’re going to be able to hold the line with just a bunch of IDPA and IPSC shooters is nuts. The decline in hunting will hurt us.
• NRA has gotten complacent, far too reliant on gun owners self-organizing, and far too reliant on their main PR firm. I think they need to seek out a diversity on views about how they promote their public image. Unlike some people, I’m not viscerally opposed to Ack-Mac being involved with NRA, but I think NRA should invite in some competing views in that area. They also need to really start making major investments in traditional grassroots organizing. They need membership that are active rather than passive consumers of NRA’s product.
• The Republican Party has no competition for the gun vote. The reason we did better in Obama’s first two years? The Dems were competing for gun votes with the GOP. You’re seeing a lot of Republicans take a stand on the assault weapons issue, but give into the gun control folks on other issues. They are letting Bloomberg demand a whole slice of our cake, offering him a half slice and then coming back to us and saying “See, we saved you half a slice. Don’t you love us?” No assholes, do something for us. They deserve to be richly punished, but they also know if the Dems are polling at 40% for repealing the Second Amendment, with sweeping gun bans and other restrictions polling even higher, they don’t have to do much for us. Again, we can take our ball and go home, but that basically means no one will give a shit what we think and we’ll get steamrolled. It’s forfeiting the game.

The common theme here is demographic trends are catching up to us. Bloomberg’s money is by far the biggest factor. There isn’t enough passion for gun control out there for it to self-organize, but if money is no object, and you have a lot of smart Obama people who suddenly found themselves out of a job and needing a cause, you can accomplish quite a lot with a top-down approach.

Those days are coming to a close. I keep saying that it doesn’t matter if polling of millennials says they don’t support gun control. If they aren’t willing to fight for it, it won’t matter worth a damn. If they put Democrats in power, they will start banning guns, accessories, and placing other restrictions. That is going to start happening in every state the Dems have a shot at, which is a lot. From the article:

“It didn’t change my mind,” Helm said of the Fair Haven case, “but it got me thinking a lot more in detail.”

Helm sees a generational shift eroding Vermont’s traditional gun culture. Gun owners are getting older, and young people are not as active on gun rights.

“It didn’t shift in the last month,” Helm said. “It started a long time ago, and it will go on for a long time. It’s going to go on a little harder and faster if we don’t put a stop to this.”

That’s from a lawmaker who voted against S. 55, a bill that will ban bump stocks (the bad broad bill Bloomberg has been pushing) raise the age for buying guns to 21 across the board, ban private sales, and ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. This seems likely to pass in Vermont.

This is the way it’s going to go folks, state-by-state. How likely do you think we are to get federal preemption if 15 states have the same laws as New York? What you’re seeing is our activist base getting old and tried, and not being replaced by millennials. If we don’t replace those people, how millennials poll on gun control won’t matter. By the time they are in charge, the generations of Dems they put into power will have already ruined us.

Completely unsurprising to anyone who has been following the process, ATF has essentially ruled that the distinction between the currently available bump stocks and the Akins Accelerator is one without a distinction, and that they were wrong when they classified Bump Stocks as not machine guns. Essentially ATF ruled the shelf where you rest your finger is the difference, since it allows the recoil of the rifle to successfully actuate the trigger as it’s pulled into the finger.

Does this mean a belt loop is a machine gun? Probably better not to ask that question. There are a lot of things we do that are honestly better off flying under the radar. Bump firing was one of them, but that asshole in Vegas brought the issue front and center. Home built firearms are another. You don’t have to spend much time in politics, or on social media, to realize the people are extremely irrational about guns and weapons in general. Libertarians are often too clever by half. We want to outsmart the system. But the system doesn’t care about your logical universe. ATF’s ruling here doesn’t really make any sense, but you know what? They don’t care, because it’s politically convenient.

And whether anyone will admit it or not, ATF is doing us a favor, because this doesn’t deal with cranks, doesn’t deal with match triggers, doesn’t deal with rates of fire or other bullshit the preferred bills that are passing are based on. I really don’t like that some people are likely to get screwed by this because they bought bump stocks and likely won’t hear of the reclassification. I do hope the feds exercise discretion.

I’ve said it before, but machine guns are lost. I can’t see beyond 20 years, so maybe by then it will change. Maybe by then we will have lost everything. Who knows? Our immediate goal is saving semi-automatic firearms, and in that fight we don’t need to do Josh Sugarmann any favors by helping blur that line.