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Title: Trump Announces He’s a Few Weeks From Banning Bump Stocks
Source:
From The Trenches/10th Amendment Center
URL Source: http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.c ... rom-banning-bump-stocks/235057
Published: Oct 19, 2018
Author: Joe Wolverton, II
Post Date: 2018-10-20 14:17:05 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 19029
Comments: 148
Tenth Amendment Center – by Joe Wolverton, II President Donald Trump promises that he is “just a few weeks” from issuing regulations that would outlaw bump fire stocks. “We’re knocking out bump stocks,” Trump said at a White House news conference on October 1. “We’re in the final two or three weeks, and I’ll be able to write out bump stocks.” This Republican president’s promise to “write out” bump fire stocks sounds suspiciously like his Democratic predecessor’s claim to possess the power to use his phone and pen to make law. “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” Barack Obama proclaimed in 2014. “And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions,” he added. This two-party, one policy situation is decades old. Regarding the presidential penchant for disarming the American people, I am reminded of a story I wrote in January 2014: “In an executive ‘Fact Sheet’ issued January 3 by the White House, the president purports to establish new guidelines for “keep[ing] Guns out of Potentially Dangerous Hands.” NOTE: Originally published at The New American Magazine and reposted here with permission from the author. The next paragraph of that story can now be applied to both President Obama and President Trump: “What President Obama — a former part-time law professor — seems not to understand is that every time he issues some executive order, presidential finding, or ‘fact sheet,’ he is exceeding the constitutional limits on his power and thereby violating his oath of office.” All you need to do is change the last name of the president and change the words “fact sheet” to “memorandum” and the story is no different. President Trump is exercising that same unconstitutional “authority” to infringe significantly on the rights protected by the Second Amendment, specifically, the right to “keep and bear arms.” Trump’s attack on the Second Amendment in the form of banning bump fire stocks should come as no surprise. In fact, back in February the president issued an official memorandum ordering the Department of Justice “to dedicate all available resources to complete the review of the comments received, and, as expeditiously as possible, to propose for notice and comment a rule banning all devices that turn legal weapons into machineguns.” Lest there be any misunderstanding, the memo identifies the device in question as “bump fire stocks and similar devices.” For those of you counting on the National Rifle Association (NRA) to come to the defense of the Second Amendment, you probably don’t want to read any further. The NRA released the following statement regarding federal regulation of bump fire stocks: The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations. So, no help from the NRA for Americans who believed the group to be defenders of the Second Amendment. Of course, such a statement isn’t surprising considering that the very same press release reveals that the NRA doesn’t understand the purpose of the Second Amendment. “In an increasingly dangerous world, the NRA remains focused on our mission: strengthening Americans’ Second Amendment freedom to defend themselves, their families and their communities,” the statement reads. Wrong. Our Founding Fathers were not concerned about protecting a man’s right to keep his home and family safe from “danger.” Our Founding Fathers protected the individual’s right to keep and bear arms because they knew that such was the only way to avoid being enslaved by tyrants. They knew from their study of history that a tyrant’s first move was always to disarm the people, and generally to claim it was for their safety, and to establish a standing army so as to convince the people that they didn’t need arms to protect themselves, for the tyrant and his professional soldiers would do it for them. Sound familiar? Consider this gem from William Blackstone, a man of immense and undeniable influence on the Founders and their understanding of rights, civil and natural. In Volume I of his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Blackstone declares “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.” Would anyone in America — or the world, for that matter — argue that the “sanctions of society and laws” are sufficient to “restrain violence” or oppression? Thus, the people must be armed. Commenting on Blackstone’s Commentaries, eminent Founding Era jurist and constitutional scholar St. George Tucker put a finer point on the purpose of protecting the natural right of all people to keep and bear arms. He wrote: This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. Enough said. As for President Trump, he has done many things consistent with his solemn oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. His issuing of a regulation to shrink the scope of the Second Amendment is not one of them, however. It’s this easy: Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution grants federal lawmaking power exclusively to the Congress. Regardless of the word he uses to describe it, any time the president orders the executive branch to create law by executive decree, he is usurping the authority of the legislature. Finally, in his memo, President Trump writes that he was motivated to begin the process of banning bump fire stocks “after the deadly mass murder in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 1, 2017.” No matter how many people are clamoring for protection, no matter how many madmen go on murderous sprees, the president is not constitutionally authorized to take “executive actions” that encroach upon rights protected by the Constitution — in this case, the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Apart from his work as a journalist, Joe Wolverton, II is a professor of American Government at Chattanooga State and was a practicing attorney until 2009. He lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Since 2000, Joe has been a featured contributor to The New American magazine. Most recently, he has written a cover story article on the Tea Party movement, as well as a five-part series on the unconstitutionality of Obamacare.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 71.
#36. To: Deckard (#0)
Bump stocks effectively turn a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon. Machine guns have been illegal since the 1920s. A clever person found a clever way to make a machine gun. Of course that can be regulated to nothing.
That's incorrect, there are many firing full auto at Knob Creek and elsewhere. NFA '34 levied a $200 tax stamp on them. There are many machine guns in private hands, "legally". Canadian Senator goes full auto, legally....
Yes, ok, there are machine guns in private hands. But they are tightly regulated. It is difficult to get a legal automatic weapon. As a society, we have drawn the line at automatic weapons. You can have semi-automatic weapons, but full automatics are difficult to come by legally, and buying one requires a lot of extra steps. This seems like a reasonable place to draw the line. In a similar vein, I don't mind if airplane aficionados buy and fly World War II bombers. I do mind if they are able to arm them with bombs.
This seems like a reasonable place to draw the line. That's because you don't know WTF you are talking about. These are THE very weapons the Second Amendment was written to protect. In a similar vein, I don't mind if airplane aficionados buy and fly World War II bombers. I do mind if they are able to arm them with bombs. This proves you don't know WTF you are talking about.
Yep, 100 years before they were invented, that's what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Mmmmhmmm. Seems legit.
The founding fathers knew that wanabe tyrants will always exist, so arms parity with the military. Come and take them, Piers13!
So, the Second Amendment guarantees your right to possess your own personal nuke?
I've have a zero 'Unexpected Event' record.
That's swell. But do you claim that the Second Amendment guarantees your right to your own personal nuke?
While it seems clear your understanding of firearms is immense,could you help out those of us who aren't as knowledgeable as you by splaining to usens how a automatic rifle is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb or missile?
The Second Amendment does not say "individual firearms". It says "arms". Can you not simply answer the question? Does the Second Amendment protect the right of individuals to possess nukes, biological weapons, chemical weapons, land mines, etc. You're engaging in a line-drawing exercise, which is good, because it at least makes it clear that you are on the reservation of the sane. You're doing yourself and your cause (protecting individual ownership of firearms) no favors by attacking and insulting me. I'm a natural ally. But if you cannot draw a line, a clear one, if you cannot say "No, there is no personal right to those weapons", and you have to act as though your interlocutor, me, a military veteran myself, is an idiot, a numbnuts, every other sort of thing, then you should understand that you are undercutting yourself politically. Your argument is that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to firearms. Ok. They say that positively and affirmatively. "Individual weapons" in an age of miniaturisation, doesn't get you there. There are individually deployed chemical and biological weapons. You have to be be able to say that NBC weapons are not protected by the Second Amendment. You should be able to say that easily, as easily as the insults roll off your tongue. But you don't, at least not yet. And because you don't, you weaken your side. Of course, if the government has the NBC and individuals don't that means the government is stronger. If the British government had had nukes in 1776 we would not be independent. But if individuals could buy and own chemical, biological and nuclear weapons easily and freely, we wouldn't be alive either. The nature of modern weaponry is such that the government is always going to have the upper hand nowadays. That does not mean that we should take guns away from individuals.
#72. To: Vicomte13 (#71)
If you take the words of the Constitution literally then yes. The constitution's words should be taken literally. The constitution isn't like the Bible which is error free.
No. Nor does it forbid it. Irrelevant because none are individual weapons carried by the typical soldier.
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#37. To: Vicomte13, Full Auto is legal (#36)
(Edited)
Machine guns have been illegal since the 1920s
#38. To: hondo68 (#37)
#46. To: Vicomte13 (#38)
As a society, we have drawn the line at automatic weapons. You can have semi-automatic weapons, but full automatics are difficult to come by legally, and buying one requires a lot of extra steps.
#49. To: sneakypete (#46)
That's because you don't know WTF you are talking about. are THE very weapons the Second Amendment was written to protect.
#51. To: Vicomte13, wanabe tyrants, *Bill of Rights-Constitution* (#49)
Yep, 100 years before they were invented, that's what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Mmmmhmmm. Seems legit.
#52. To: hondo68 (#51)
arms parity with the miltiary
#53. To: Vicomte13, amateurs (#52)
So, the Second Amendment guarantees your right to possess your own personal nuke?
Texas Nuclear Weapons Facility Pantex Activates Emergency Response Team Because of 'Unexpected Event'
#54. To: hondo68 (#53)
I've have a zero 'Unexpected Event' record.
#61. To: Vicomte13 (#54)
That's swell. But do you claim that the Second Amendment guarantees your right to your own personal nuke?
#71. To: sneakypete (#61)
Replies to Comment # 71. Can you not simply answer the question? Does the Second Amendment protect the right of individuals to possess nukes, biological weapons, chemical weapons, land mines, etc.
#86. To: Vicomte13 (#71)
Does the Second Amendment protect the right of individuals to possess nukes, biological weapons, chemical weapons, land mines, etc.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 71.
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