Buckeye Firearms by Chad D. Baus 9/22/2021
Mainstream media outlets have been devoid of news that yet another court has ruled that a ban on bump stocks instituted by the BATFE at the request of then-President Donald Trump improperly classified the devices as machineguns.
Last March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) cannot classify bump stocks as machine guns for the purpose of federal firearm regulations. The ruling covers the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.
More recently, on September 7, the U.S. Navy-Marine Corp Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in U.S. v. Alkazahg, docket no. 202000087, that Private (E-2) Ali Alkazahg was erroneously convicted of possessing two unregistered machineguns (i.e. bumpstocks).
As explained in the ruling:
"In 1986, Congress passed the Firearms Owners' Protection Act [FOPA], banning possession of machine guns not owned before 1986. FOPA also banned any parts, to include frames and receivers, which were part of a machine gun or were designed for converting a weapon into a machine gun. The current statute at issue is 26 U.S.C. ยง 5845(b), which defines what a machine gun is. Due to having a bump stock, Appellant was charged under the statute which states that a machine gun is "any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically, more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger."
Akazahg's defense argued that bump stocks did not meet the legal definition of a machine gun. The U.S. Navy-Marine Corp Court of Appeals has now agreed.
In its ruling, the court provides a detailed review of the history of bumpstocks, and emphasizes that the ATF never considered bumpstocks to be machineguns until President Trump ordered ATF to reclassify them as machineguns.
More:
https://www.buckeyefirearms.org/military-court-rules-trump-atf-was-wrong-bump-stocks-are-not-machineguns
