It’s rare when SCOTUS Justices drop hammers out of the blue.
June is traditionally the biggest month at the Supreme Court.
But the Supreme Court just dropped a stick of June dynamite that no one saw coming.
By Mark Barham
Rare victories for conservatives come on the Second Amendment
If you are a Conservative and a Constitutionalist, you know what it is like to be on the losing end of the legislative and judicial process. You name the issues, and a Conservative can point you to the losses sustained and the restrictions on your freedoms.
Just look at the federal debt. The federal debt has been a hot topic for conservatives for decades. Back in 2004, the national debt was floating around 7.4 trillion dollars. Fast Forward twenty years to today, and our national debt is skyrocketing each year, with it currently sitting at just over 34.8 trillion dollars. Even though conservatives have been pushing for reining in spending on the national level for decades, their concerns have fallen on deaf ears by nearly everyone in Congress (both Republicans and Democrats).
Well, as conservatives have lost considerable ground to Democrats on nearly every issue, one area where conservatives have been able to hold ground against ever-encroaching tyranny has been on the Second Amendment. When the Supreme Court reiterated your constitutional right to keep and bear arms in D.C. v. Heller, in 2008, and McDonald v. City of Chicago, in 2010, the political elites in Washington, D.C., and around the nation were in complete shock. Such victories by conservatives for the American people hadn’t been achieved since the progressive rise of the Supreme Court in the FDR era.
Bump stocks are legal. . . again
However, even though the Supreme Court made it crystal clear that your right to keep and bear arms isn’t up for negotiation as the Second Amendment is enshrined in the Constitution, Democrats have been trying everything they can to still find ways to make gun owners’ lives a living hell. And, like they always do when they don’t get their way, the Washington, D.C., establishment turned to the administrative state to find ways to restrict your Second Amendment rights. And one of the ways they found to turn legal gun owners into law beakers by the stroke of an administrative regulation was by classifying bump stocks as “machine guns” under The National Firearms Act of 1934.
And the Democrats got their wish during the Trump Presidency. Back in 2018, after the gut-wrenching Las Vegas shooting, the Trump-controlled ATF announced that bump stocks would be defined as machine guns going forward, in reaction to public pronouncements that the atrocity was carried out with the devices. The ban was allowed under the statutory language, which reads, “Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”
But thankfully for Conservatives and constitution lovers, the Supreme Court just shot down this far-reaching administrative ruling and sided with firearm owners. Late last week, the Supreme Court ruled against the bump stock ban in Garland v. Cargill.
Justice Thomas took a chainsaw to the ATF’s case to ban bump stocks. And where the rubber meets the road in his opinion, Justice Thomas wrote the obvious:
Nothing changes when a semiautomatic rifle is equipped with a bump stock. The firing cycle remains the same. Between every shot, the shooter must release pressure from the trigger and allow it to reset before reengaging the trigger for another shot. A bump stock merely reduces the amount of time that elapses between separate “functions” of the trigger. The bump stock makes it easier for the shooter to move the firearm back toward his shoulder and thereby release pressure from the trigger and reset it. And, it helps the shooter press the trigger against his finger very quickly thereafter. A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does. Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will fire only one shot for every “function of the trigger.” So, a bump stock cannot qualify as a machinegun under §5845(b)’s definition. Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. ___ (2024).
Lawrence DeMonico, President of Rare Breed Triggers, gives an update on his lawsuit against the ATF and The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Garland v. Cargill. pic.twitter.com/2pahNfEFod
— National Association for Gun Rights (@NatlGunRights) June 17, 2024
Now that the gun-grabbers’ ability to create law by administrative regulations has been shot down, the sky’s the limit to what other overreaching regulations could come on the chopping block next that infringe on gun owners rights on a daily basis.
Keep Fully Loaded Magazine in your sights to stay on top of exactly what the Gun Control Lobby is plotting, how guns actually make Americans safer, and fun stories surrounding the regular exercise of your Second Amendment freedoms.