Maryland’s bump stock ban bill, also knows as SB 707, was signed into law by Governor Larry Hogan back in April. Because guns. Maryland Shall Issue filed suit in June, arguing the new law is an unconstitutional taking and unreasonably vague. Yesterday, however, a US District Court judge denied Maryland Shall Issue’s request to keep the law from going into effect on October 1.
One of the biggest concerns about the new law is that it can be interpreted just about any way a law enforcement officer or agency wants. That’s do doubt seen as a feature by the legislators who wrote it, not a bug.
But MSI notes that the judge who denied their motion for relief stated that an application to the ATF for an “authorization to possess” a bump stock or other “rapid fire trigger activator” would allow Crab Staters to avoid prosecution. For now. Allegedly.
Anyway, Maryland Shall Issue has sent out an alert about the ruling:
Gun Owners of Maryland: BEWARE!
YOUR ATTENTION AND ACTION ARE NEEDED IMMEDIATELY
On September 14th, 2018, United States District Court Judge James K. Bredar denied Maryland Shall Issue’s motion for temporary relief against the State’s ban on possession of “Rapid Fire Trigger Activators” by SB 707, signed into law by the Governor on April 24, 2018. This means the law will go into effect as passed on October 1st, 2018. That’s just two weeks from now.
HOWEVER, while the case is pending, the judge made it clear that he believes all that’s needed to comply with the law is for the existing owner to send a letter applying for authorization to possess the “devices” covered by SB 707 to the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) by 10/01/2018. That is the “grandfather” clause contained in SB 707 and that was the clause that the judge seized upon in holding that MSI had failed to show the “irreparable injury” necessary for preliminary relief.
As he said at the hearing, all you have to do is “apply” to the ATF by October 1 for “authorization to possess” the “device” in order to avoid prosecution for a year. And to the judge, it simply did not matter that the ATF has refused to receive or process any such request for “authorization” because the statute merely required the owner to “apply,” not for the ATF to actually accept the application.
But, here is the rub: The law is so vague that no one knows what it covers. Every gun owner in the state may possess “Rapid Fire Trigger Activator(s), and not even know it. Such “device[s]” includes binary trigger systems, bump stocks, burst trigger systems, a Hellfire Trigger, a trigger crank, or a burst trigger system and copies thereof.
But the banned items ALSO includes any “device, including a removable manual or power-driven activating device, constructed so that, when installed in or attached to a firearm: (I) the rate at which the trigger is activated increases; or (II) the rate of fire increases.” Yet, virtually anything you do to your firearm may “increase” the “rate of fire” by some minute amount, including cleaning it. There is no definition for a “device” and the statute includes ALL firearms, not merely semi-automatics.
At the hearing, Judge Bredar remarked on the extreme vagueness of the State’s law as he demonstrated how GUN OIL being used to lubricate A BOLT-ACTION RIFLE to “increase” the “rate of fire” of the rifle because the action could be worked more efficiently, meaning the trigger could be manually activated faster than it could before using the GUN OIL. The judge thus warned the State that he had real problems with how vague the statute was.
In short, we don’t know what is covered by this language covering a “device” that increases the “rate of fire” and neither does the State, the judge or anyone else. The potential for arbitrary enforcement is quite real.
Click here to read the rest of the alert and to download a form MSI has created for Marylanders to use to apply to the ATF for authorization to possess that bump stock, trigger crank or bottle of RemOil you may or may not own. Good luck.
Fuck democrats.
And fuck the NRA’s leadership for giving these efforts the go ahead in the first place.
And what exactly have you done to advance gun rights other than bitch on TTAG?
He probably gets paid by Soros or bloomberg to sow dissent.
He who helps my enemy is NOT my friend (talking to you NRA). No one paid me to say this.
Call candidates and donate to those who pledge to introduce repeal.
Donate, Call, send money to groups that actually sue them in Supreme court and win, such as Second Amendment Foundation http://www.saf.org Guess who fought and won Heller v DC and many others? Guess who was behind the 3D printed gun v DOJ?
It was so called “gun rights supporters” on TTAG who were first up to say banning the Bump Stock was ok. They are ok with only rich fat white men having MG’s. The “poor” don’t need rapid fire guns according to the so called gun rights people with 5 or 6 gun safes, and their grandfathers shogun.
And then those same people attack Hi Point???
Yep…there’s some truth there. There are definately some MG owners trying to protect their investments.
As for the argument that a true MG is a lot better than a bumpstock I present to you a bone stock 6920 with its factory crap trigger running at 800RPM which is right inline with the 700-950 RPM spec of an M4.
True, you’d never want to be in a gun fight with a bumpstock but for range toy simulation of FA it’s not a bad $90 spent.
I can do the same thing with a fixed stock and save $90 — hold stock away from shoulder, put thumb along side of lower receiver (not behind grip), hold trigger finger bent, and let trigger guard slide along middle finger of trigger hand.
Bump stocks don’t affect the price of machine guns. Bump stocks have been around for several years (a decade ?), and prices of transferable M16s have still been going up over that time. If bump stocks crashed the machine gun market, I’d be able to buy one for less than what a decent car goes for.
Rick Scott and the GOP’s/Trump’s law go into effect in Florida on October 1st as well.
Feel free to vote democrat then. Let me know how that turns out for you.
Given Scott loves illegal aliens and gun control, exactly the same except there’s a Republican on the ballot in 2024.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’ll bash Scott for his weakling stance on gun rights as much as anyone. But a common line expressed here is even voting republican pointless because they’re just as bad as the democrats. That’s flat out not true. I really don’t like Scott, but I hate Nelson. At least Scott can get it right on other conservative causes that’ll help gun rights in the end. More republicans in Congress means more pro gun Supreme Court justices and better at stopping the enivitable battle over the next AWB.
Fuck Republicans!!
If it wasn’t for Republicans the second amendment would’ve been gone, long gone, by the 90s. Some of us are old enough to remember farther back then 10 years though. I remember a time when not only the banning of all guns was a real possibility, but even the thought of carrying a gun was absolutely absurd, even from “POTG”. It really wasn’t that long ago either.
“If it wasn’t for Republicans the second amendment would’ve been gone . . .”
Well said. The obtuse political beliefs of people, apparently gun owners and enthusiasts but possibly trolls, who really ought to know better never ceases to amaze. Now that only dogma instead of critical thought is all that’s being taught in schools, I suppose this curious combination of hubris and ignorance is destined to be the new normal.
Republicans have been anti gun for many years. Many have pushed gun laws although it has been Dems since Clinton, most of the anti gun laws before that have been started by Republicans.
Our freedom is dear to me and I trust no one to keep me free. If you think that the rich in this country want us poor people to have guns, you must be smoking crack.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is a Republican.
Well he’s registered Republican
Simple solution as always.
Shoot any Tyrant that tries to enforce this crap, then look for the politicians that voted for it.
I would recommend that one NOT just go around shooting Governors and Judges. At least until you have a hundred thousand or so other people ready to do so with you.
It has to start somewhere. The Bundy Ranch incident show there are many willing.
shooting an anti-gun politician to promote guns only serves to support their positions.
Maybe you should consider bombs, fires, stabbings, vehicles, acids, and poisons to show that gun laws are useless to a determined killer…
(don’t really consider any of those things, please.)
If this succeeds, up next, anything that increases the effective range and accuracy of a weapon – scopes, match barrels, bipods, and on and on. These aholes will never be satisfied. 🙁
I’m truly surprised there has not already been a push to ban scopes and especially night and thermal vision. I’m sure it’s coming.
AR/AK style rifles are the low hanging fruit. Other modern developments are on the shopping list, and will absolutely be targeted; just not yet, although I have heard some commentary in the past couple of years about rifles with extreme long range accuracy such as the Barrett’s and others. Right now such weaponry is very expensive, which means the avg. low budget shooter just doesn’t have the money it takes to make head shots at a mile or more. But there are cartel shooters and others who do have the skill, weaponry, and money. Give it a couple years, and we might very well see some of this kind of shooting in the US; and the second we do, the left will be all over it.
Added to my last: Are you familiar with TiborasaurusRex and his Sniper 101 series of “How to” videos for ELR shooting? It’s still up on Youtube. If you’re not you should check it out.
BAN JERRY MICULEK!!! You will be in serious trouble if you let him shoot your guns, since he triples the rate of fire!!! He violates subsection II of the new statute!
So I ask the obvious questions:
What is the “acceptable published trigger rate, and how was it established?
Is this rate per gun model?
Is there a LEO carve out?
I know you’re being sarcastic, but some folks won’t get that, so for those folks: There is no “published acceptable rate of fire”. But I’m pretty sure the lefty gun grabbers will attempt to base one on the “common” rate of fire for a 1700’s flint lock, which would be around 3 shots per minute for the avg. pilgrim back then.
They think that would be perfectly acceptable given they already think the 2A doesn’t apply to anything other than front stuffers, and that rate of fire is just fine for deer hunting.
While sarcasm is not noted, I am mostly serious with the questions.
I’m not a legal expert,but would it not be foolish to word said laws without quantifiable speed(s)? Without said limit, how can one argue for/against a device that changes speed of firing? Is a muscle twitch a banned object? Was Jerry Miculek or Barney Fife consulted as a threshold of firing weapons at maximum speed?
My math sucks, but I’m sure someone can devise a formula to indicate and ‘common’ max speed based on time needed for semi’s to cycle in pristine , stock condition, with specific loads, weather conditions. This should result in a spread sheet of values that takes months to assemble. Then what happens when one variable changes….
I would like to think this ideology can be used to push back on the law for a while, so we can get these idiotic laws repealed.
The whole point is, the laws themselves, in any form, are extremely foolish. There is no way to remedy that besides repeal.
When they forget to put on their “reasonable” face, antis tend to fall back on 18th century muskets as a good yardstick for an acceptable rate of fire. After all, the Constitution is a living document that simultaneously protects the most modern forms of free speech available and absolutely nothing beyond the firearm technology available in 1789…
A good counter argument is simple historical context. Muzzle loading flintlocks, in particular the “Kentucky” long rifle with it’s great accuracy (See the “Battle of Kings Mountain” for instance) was s first-class military weapon for it’s time. Imposing contemporary values (arguing that the current AR and AK’s would never have been “intended” by the founders) is easily refuted as shamelessly unsound historical analysis. The founders would have loved to have access to a few hundred AR’s or AK’s. Washington and his commanders would definitely put them to good use.
May I recommend a fine book by Harry Turtledove, titled ‘Guns of the South’. The premise is that some South African gentlemen , who have the ability to time travel, go back and introduce Gen. Lee to the AK-47; with the expected result.
Ban assault liberals instead.
“Here’s What You Can Do Now”
Ignore it. Done. What’s the problem?
The problem is that they can put you in jail for ignoring it.
They’re going to have to get the SCOTUS to help them, and I don’t think they can. So, ignore it.
The NRA failed when it allowed the National Firearms Act of 1934 to stand without offering opposition, the 1968 Gun Control Act, the national instant check system, the no new machine gun for civilian ban in 1986, the so-called assault weapons ban in 1991, and other infringements on the Second Amendment. The next infringement will be a ban on bump stocks and other rate increasing mechanisms, that the NRA seems to want, offering feeble or no opposition, in the spirit of compromise.
Let’s face it. What better way to increase membership than to allow infringements to be enacted and then push for a new membership drive. Yes, the NRA has done good, but its spirit of compromise will only lead to one thing–confiscation.
If the NRA is truly the premier gun rights organization, it must reject ALL compromise.
Your post that the NRA is not doing enough is misleading. The NRA never said to ban bump fire stocks, only that it should be referred back to the ATF knowing that the ATF had a 12 year record of approving at least 8 or more bump fire variants made by at least three companies. After the Los Vegas shooting this was the one single act that not only drew the spotlight away from semi-auto ban legislation but probably prevented Congress from banning bump fires by legislation. I hope you at least took the time to write your letters during the two different comment periods. As for the Hughes Ammendment to the FOPA if you watch the video of the voice/hand vote you can plainly see that the 86 ammendment did not pass. The Democrat that presided over the vote sanctioned the voice/hand vote as legimate and it became law. Watch it for yourself. As to the ’68 CGA, if you were around for that, it was created after the murders of a US President, his brother Bobby running for office and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. The 68 GCA was unstoppable.
While the law may be offensive to some it’s far better than what could have happened. Even with the NICS check any normal person can buy as many guns as they want. And if you work hard and save your money you can still buy a machine gun. SBR’s and suppressors can still easily be purchased. I would recommend that people buy what they can now as firearms and NFA items will probably be grandfathered in no matter what happens. It’s important to get out and vote and secure our success at the midterm elections and 2020. The Dems may be in for a big surprise especially since some Hispanic and African American voters voted for Trump and now that their and the whole country’s unemployment rates are at historical lows, the economy is on a tear and the trade imbalance tarrifs will benefit the US to the tune of billions of dollars we just might find that a lot more people like the way America is headed. Except for Hillary and her ANTIFA supporters.
Well let’s look at exactly what the NRA said and that is still on their website https://home.nra.org/joint-statement
Despite the fact that the Obama administration approved the sale of bump fire stocks on at least two occasions, the National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law. The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.
Now very knowledgeable gun folks could say that the NRA believes that a review by the ATF would continue with their current ruling a bumpstock is technically not a FA gun but to just about every other person in the world the NRA gave ground.
A more interesting proposal would have been to propose that if a bumpstock is “just like a machine gun” then bumpstock owners should be allowed to turn their un-registered bumpstocks in for a certificate that would allow them to buy a fully-registered newly created and transferable AR15 or AK lower. That would be for the currently owned bumptocks.
Newly made bumpstocks would still be allowed and would just have to have a S/N and go through normal BGC.
The net effect of that would be the increase of transfearable MGs from it’s current 200K to probably over 600K+
Now thats a lot better opening bargaining position than the give-away that the NRA started with.
Gun owners have been “compromising” for far too long. The buck MUST stop here.
Looks fo
Looks to me like, at least at the state level, the he good judge nullified the Hughes act. Want a real machine gun? Just fill out the ATF form, which won’t be approved.
Uhhh since when did ATF agree to hand out these magically certificates? Didn’t someone already try this, and was given a “sorry, we don’t do that” letter from ATF?
Feature, not a bug. These laws are made by and for people who actually enjoy reading Kafka.
Swamp them with bs “registrations”. Have a box of rubber bands? Register it. Shoelaces? Register them. Bottle of CLP? That gets registered, too.
Bury the bureaucrats under hundreds of thousands of pages of registrations the state has to process.
Why do people want to restrict others right and in effect their own rights, for that matter? I just can’t get inside the heads of the wee little fascists that posed for the above photo. I honestly don’t understand why they do what they do. Is it out of ignorance? I don’t know. Freedom is the most important thing in life and these people are actually happy when they cut a small slice of it off.
Freedom requires a acceptance of responsibility for your actions. They don’t want that responsibility. It’s much easier to avoid it and pass the blame off to others. Simple as that.
Sadly, the state I was born in (granted was only there 2 years) and would have like to retired to has gone wacko on guns. I will NOT be retiring there now.
So belts? Fingers?
any “device … that, when installed in or attached to a firearm: (I) the rate at which the trigger is activated increases; or (II) the rate of fire increases.”
My firearms all fire faster with my hands attached.
So are We Banning anyone under 21 years of age from a Driver’s license and motor vehicle weapons as well.
As always stay the F@#K out of Maryland and most all of the Northeast. I find it sad that many of the original 13 colonies. Who later fought for and won their freedom from a Tyrannical Government. Becoming the founding states and government of the Freest Nation on earth. Now employ the same sort of Tyranny on their SUBJECTS. Remember the first battle of the Revolutionary war wasn’t fought over Taxes or Oppression. It was fought over the Right to Own Firearms. Keep Your Powder Dry…
Seriously… to hell with MD. When I used to live in the National Capitol Region I turned down some very well paying job offers because the jobs were in MD. I think MD, just like any state that expects you to pay taxes like an adult, but doesn’t trust you as an adult is a shithole state.
What are the Liberal gun owners in Maryland doing about this?
What DID THEY DO about this???
“But MSI notes that the judge who denied their motion for relief stated that an application to the ATF for an “authorization to possess” a bump stock or other “rapid fire trigger activator” would allow Crab Staters to avoid prosecution. For now. Allegedly.”
The ATF does not regulate these so there is no way to get an authorization.
STUPID JUDGE.
“Additional regulations’ is not a flat outright BAN.
Better to say ‘lets talk about this’ then ‘HELL NO’, because the politicians will do as they please.
For those that bash our NRA (I’m life member), that is your choice, but you will benefit from all NRA activities that help fight erosion of our Second Amendment Rights. No origination is prefect.
Will all of them be smiling at the next mass shooting event when criminal(s) ignore existing gun laws and will use any and all items at their disposal to murder law abiding citizens?
Seems to me that every gun owner in Maryland should “apply” to the ATF for authorization to process everything covered un SB 707. Be a vague as absolutly possible.