Virginia – -(AmmoLand.com)- The bump-stock ban rule change has now been signed and is set to take effect in around 90 days. There were over 66,000 comments in opposition to the ban.
Virginia Citizens Defense League has opposed any bump-stock bans from the moment President Trump floated the idea after the Las Vegas massacre. (VCDL beat back bump-stock-ban bills in the General Assembly earlier this year, too.)
To that effect, Virginia Citizens Defense League has joined Gun Owners of America (GOA) in a lawsuit to overturn BATFE’s bump-stock ban regulation!
**As part of the lawsuit, a motion for an injunction will also be filed in a federal court to stop implementation of the bump-stock ban until there has been a ruling on the merits of the lawsuit. We don’t want people destroying their bump stocks, only to have the ban ultimately overturned!**
To ban bump stocks, the BATFE had to do a 180-degree turn, as several times before they said that bump stocks were perfectly legal and as a legal product; countless bump stocks have been sold.
BATFE is now taking the ridiculous and untenable position that bump stocks are “machine guns.” Nice try, no cigar, BATFE.
Bump stocks are clearly NOT machine guns per federal law. The trigger has to be pulled and released each time a shot goes off.
A semi-automatic firearm can be bump fired without any attachments or changes to the gun. Bump firing requires that the shooter actively hold the gun in a particular manner to speed up how fast the trigger can be pulled and released. Bump stocks merely make bump firing, which has always been legal, easier to do. (To ban bump firing, humans would have to be declared illegal. )
For the bump stock to work, it still requires the shooter to actively hold the gun in a particular manner and push forward with his support hand, which belies the BATFE’s contention that the bump stock is “self-regulating.”
Here’s another way to look at it: if bump stocks converted semi-automatic rifles into machine guns and are self-regulating, as alleged, then all a person would have to do is to hold the gun with one hand, squeeze the trigger and the gun would run in fully-automatic mode. It won’t. It will fire one shot and stop, as all semi-automatics (and revolvers) do. The shooter MUST actively apply forward pressure with his support hand, which allows the trigger to reset before the trigger is pulled again by the shooter’s finger.
If we don’t fight this phony regulation, then using BATFE’s logic and wording in the regulation, all semi-automatics could be banned down the road. BATFE is MAKING LAW, not implementing laws that Congress has created, as it is supposed to do.
Regardless of whether you own a bump stock or not, and regardless of what you think of bump stocks generally, we dare not let BATFE get away with EXCEEDING THEIR POWERS to regulate firearms in any way.
If you wish to help offset Virginia Citizens Defense League’s cost in the lawsuit (the VCDL-PAC is not part of the lawsuit), you can contribute to VCDL here:
About Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. (VCDL):
Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. (VCDL). VCDL is an all-volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right.
For more information, visit www.vcdl.org.