Gun Owners of America have been steadfast as a Second Amendment lobbying organization on behalf of the American people. On Wednesday, GOA Executive Director Erich Pratt issued a statement on the closing of Slide Fire, a manufacturer of gun parts, namely bump stocks, due to the misinformation campaign about bump stocks and the gun confiscation compromises of the Trump administration.
“It’s sad, but not surprising, that Slide Fire is closing its doors," said Pratt. "What should surprise gun owners is that it was a Republican administration that put a gun parts maker out of business -- especially since the Obama administration had refused to take such a course of action on several occasions."
Indeed, it was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Sobarkah that approved bump stocks.
Pratt went on to state the deliberate misinformation campaign against bump stocks.
"There has been so much misinformation on bump stocks," he said. "Even the news surrounding Slide Fire’s closing has consistently misconstrued bump stocks as items that can convert a semi-automatic into a machinegun. That’s just not the case."
No, it certainly isn't. Adding a bump stock to a semi-automatic rifle does not in any way, shape or form convert it into a fully automatic machine gun. It only aids in increasing the rate of fire, but still only fires one round per pull of the trigger.
In fact, as I've pointed out previously, you don't even need a bump stock to bump fire. You can use your belt loop.
Or use a particular method of how you hold your semi-automatic rifle.
“Gun owners should be very concerned about the future of semi-automatic rifles and should not be surprised if a future anti-gun administration uses the current ATF regulations on bump stocks to declare AR-15s to be machine guns," Pratt warned. "After all, given that the proposed ATF regulations erroneously deem the bump stock firing of an AR-15 to be ‘automatic’ fire, the AR-15 thus becomes a full automatic under those circumstances. And, under federal law, at 26 U.S.C. 5845(b), any firearm that can be ‘readily restored’ or ‘converted’ to fire automatically IS a machinegun."
“But the danger is not merely a future threat for owners of semi-automatic rifles," Pratt added. "If ATF's proposed regulation goes into effect, there will be up to 500,000 bump stock owners who will instantaneously be turned into felons, because they will be in possession of an unregistered machinegun.”
Now, that is cause for concern. Criminalizing law-abiding citizens who are simply exercising their God-given rights, not permission from the state, to keep and bear arms... all kinds of arms.
Previously, Pratt pointed out that the bump stock ban was written so poorly that it did endanger your right to own an AR-15.
However, this is all a problem since not only does our Constitution state clearly that we have given no such authority to the central government to restrict or regulate arms, but we specifically did not delegate any authority to the Executive Branch to engage in banning guns or gun parts. All legislative authority is given to Congress, and we never gave them the authority to do what the Executive Branch is attempting to do.
“By banning bump stocks, Sessions is taking an action President Obama’s anti-gun rights Attorney General Eric Holder said he refused to take without explicit congressional authorization,” wrote former congressman Ron Paul.
That's actually saying quite a bit since Holder oversaw one of the biggest illegal gun trafficking schemes in our country's history that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people on both sides of the US/Mexico border, including two federal agents.
Shame on the administration for listening to a bunch of children who were handled, manipulated, coached and used to push a Communist agenda of gun confiscation.
Thankfully, I think the people of the US are simply not going to give into this totalitarian method of gun confiscation, though I admit some will. Pratt is right though. While some people lose sight of the fact that for now the target is bump stocks, is it not that big of a leap to jump to banning semi-automatic rifles, seeing as how you can do the same thing with them that you do with a bump stock?