I’m one of those crazies who thinks that machine guns should be handled on a 4473 - just like any other firearm - period. So it’s not that I have anything against bump stocks per se. It’s just that I understand what political capital is, that it is in limited supply at any given time, and that there are productive and unproductive ways to invest it. Right now, at this point in time, investing political capital in bump stocks is total loser, throwing good money after bad.......AND......it burns up political capital that would be better spent on reciprocity and suppressor deregulation, which have a chance of passage if we are patient and ride out the current hysteria until things calm down. So I think that, right now, it is politically foolhardy to spend even 5 minutes arguing with gun-controllers against banning bump stocks; and on a personal level, it’s a waste of energy.....energy that would be better spent promoting issues that at least have a chance of passing in the not too distant future.TexasJohnBoy wrote:
But, even thought I think bump stocks are dumb, reclassifying them as has been proposed presents may issues. This should be legislative action to add them to the definition of a machine gun. The executive branch pulling this isn't a good precedent to set.
Even if they are added to the definition, they should be an NFA item just like a SBR. And lets just ditch the Hughes Amendment all together.
Tomorrow morning, I am going to teach a totally phobic person about guns, over coffee at my kitchen table. She and her husband are friends of mine, and she describes herself as having an irrational fear of guns, to the point where they are genuinely panic inducing to her. Just the thought of a gun terrifies her, even when there is no gun present. I offered to show her how they work in a safe environment, and let her handle some of mine - using dummy ammunition so she can learn how to load/unload a gun safely. He’s a republican, but she is a liberal democrat. She votes accordingly when it comes to guns.....but she is honest enough to admit that she votes that way based on ignorance about them, and she was willing to find out exactly what it is that she was in fear of. My long term goal is to get her to a range, actually to empower her. But in the interim, my goal is to get her to start thinking when she votes, instead of reacting out of fear.
I believe that, given enough time, I could probably get her to the point where she and her husband buy a gun for home protection, and maybe even go to the range once in a while with each other. I can show her an AR15 or a Glock, and get her to understand and accept that neither is a machine gun or an “assault weapon”. I can show her a suppressor, take it apart and show her how it works, and get her to understand that it isn’t any more complicated (or effective) than a lawnmower muffler, and probably get her to agree that there’s not much point in regulating them. But I am absolutely convinced that I’ll never get her to support the unrestricted sale of bump stocks. Heck, it is a hard sell IN the gun community. There’s no way on God’s green earth that I can get her to agree that people should have the unrestricted right to buy a product that allows their semiautomatic weapon to fire at the same rate as a fully automatic weapon.
If we want to protect our rights, we need to make voters like her into voters like us. Promoting bump stocks after Vegas and Florida is NOT the way to do that.