…the government, as the sovereign, has the power to take property that is dangerous… without compensation. Here, ATF acted properly within the confines
of the limited federal police power… guns are protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, but machineguns are not, as the crime waves of the 1920s and 1930s convinced Congress that machineguns do not fall within the scope of protections offered by the Second Amendment. The courts have not overturned this measure and this Court will not endeavor to do so now…
As the purpose of promulgating the Final Rule was to promote
public safety and to prevent public harm, the Court must conclude that ATF acted within the
narrow confines of the police power when it required the surrender or destruction of all bump
stocks. Accordingly, the Court grants defendant’s Motion to Dismiss.
According to this article from April, the bump stock ban cost one company tens of millions of dollars:
One of the co-founders of Texas-based RW Arms, which destroyed more than 70,000 bump stocks ahead of the effective date of the ban last month, said the company took an estimated hit of more than $20 million in the process…
The lawsuit, filed in federal claims court in Washington, D.C., said the company destroyed 73,462 bump stocks in order to comply with the ban, and that Mr. Stewart destroyed 25 of them.
Guess the Feds get to ban previously legal gun hardware by executive decree, without even the modest requirements of asking Congress to pass a law, or compensating gun owners under the Fifth Amendment.
Should we now expect President WarrenHarrisO’Rourke to direct the executive branch to outlaw AR-15s–without worrying about having to compensate Americans who exercise their right to self defense?
It’s also an unconstitutional exercise of the legislative power by the executive branch, unilaterally
changing a statute passed by Congress to criminalize
previously lawful conduct. Instead of fulfilling their
constitutional duty to check constitutional violations
like this one, the lower courts worsened the problem
by applying Chevron deference, which requires courts
to subjugate to the executive branch their own judicial
duty to say what the law is.
Excerpts from the opinion:
According to this article from April, the bump stock ban cost one company tens of millions of dollars:
Guess the Feds get to ban previously legal gun hardware by executive decree, without even the modest requirements of asking Congress to pass a law, or compensating gun owners under the Fifth Amendment.
Should we now expect President WarrenHarrisO’Rourke to direct the executive branch to outlaw AR-15s–without worrying about having to compensate Americans who exercise their right to self defense?
See BumpstockCase.com for related but separate litigation. They’re pursuing the statutory (not Second Amendment) angle.
From Cato’s amicus brief in that case: