FPC Calls President Trump’s ‘Bump Stock’ Ban “Lawless”
Duncan Johnson
AmmoLand.com
February 21, 2018
SACRAMENTO, CA —-(Ammoland.com)- FPC has released the following statement regarding President Trump’s new demand for gun control and a ban on legal firearm parts:
Yesterday, President Donald Trump said that he signed “a memo” directing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to declare firearm parts, like so-called “bump stock” devices, to be illegal “machineguns” without due process or a legal basis in the statutes for doing so.
Just as we opposed the lawless manner in which President Obama often ruled by ‘pen-and-a-phone’ executive fiat, and we likewise object to and resist President Trump’s outrageous lawlessness here.
Last month, FPC submitted a formal letter of opposition to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ advanced noticed of proposed rulemaking on the “Application of the Definition of Machinegun to Bump Fire Stocks and Other Similar Devices.”
In our comments, we explained that the “DOJ and BATFE clearly lack the statutory authority to re-define the targeted devices as ‘machineguns’,” and that these ATF-approved and legally-possessed devices could not be regulated firearms under the statutes.
Today’s order makes clear that the Trump Administration will leave FPC and law-abiding gun owners no choice but to seek a judicial remedy. It is time for the People to wrestle back control of its policies from runaway executive branch officials and eliminate the “jiggery-pokery” of made-up judicial constructs like agency deference under cases like Encino Motorcars v. Navarro, Auer v. Robbins, and Chevron v. NRDC.
Regardless of the venue, the American peoples’ fundamental human rights—and lawfully-possessed private property—are not up for debate. As the Supreme Court held in its landmark, but too-often ignored, D.C. v. Heller decision, “The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.”
If the Republican-held House and Senate, and President Donald Trump, choose to act on new gun control over the pro-gun rights legislation that the American people were promised in 2016, they will have shown the voters that neither major political party cares about their rights or the Constitution—and that the only real, civil option left is a new constitutional amendment.
