Congress’ deadly dereliction of duty: Republicans are blocking action on bump stocks, which let semiautomatics fire continuously. That’s the headline at nydailynews.com. The anti-gun rights daily reader reckons . . .
As the nation absorbed the insanity that civilians not only can buy weapons of war, but can equip them with bump stocks that allow them to squeeze off nine rounds a second, even Republicans in Congress knew better than to defend the indefensible.
What the Republican pols said is one thing. What they haven’t done is another.
Over in the Senate, not one Republican is signed onto Dianne Feinstein’s bump-stock ban. The Judiciary Committee is “considering a hearing.” So nice of them.
Second Amendment absolutism has gone to lethal extremes before, but what on God’s green Earth could justify stonewalling a simple attempt to do what eight in 10 Americans say must be done, and ban equipment that turns semiautomatics into automatics? Not even the NRA has the gall to say machine guns, severely regulated since 1934 and banned for new production and sale since 1986, ought to return.
Pay no attention to the Second Amendment behind that curtain! Listen to the rabble!
I too was galled when NRA Veep Wayne LaPierre said bump fire stock should join machine guns in permanent regulatory quarantine; a call from a gun rights group to make a simple piece of plastic firearms accessory– implicated in one crime — as unavailable to the average American as a politician genuinely committed to draining the proverbial Washington swamp.
The NRA’s decision to accept that machine guns are “beyond the pale” is a refutation of previous policy and a slap in the face of gun rights advocates who believe the 2A says what it says about ANY government infringement on American’s firearms freedom. Speaking of faces . . .
To the extent they’re not just hiding like cowards, legislators like House Speaker Paul Ryan claim, with a straight face, that a ban is properly the job of regulators in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — not of Congress.
Yup: Republicans who have made a professional sport out of howling about regulatory overreach now pretend to defer to federal bureaucrats.
As much as I hate to say it, nailed it.
You may be interested to learn that we have it on good authority that the NRA checked with the ATF before they called for the agency [formerly known as jack-booted thugs] to regulate bump fire stocks to death, making sure the Bureau would do no such thing.
Cunning plan, eh? Head fake towards the ATF to give cover to Republicans strangling the bump fire bill at birth. Cunning yes, but as I’ve pointed out before, a bilious brand betrayal. But hey, real politik is a bitch baby.
And as the whole bump fire misegos fades into the media mist, it looks like this pretend throw-the-bump-fire-ban-bill-under-the-ATF’s-MRAP strategy is working. For now . . .