Supreme Court Leaves Bump Stock Ban In Place

BY Herschel Smith
4 years ago

CNN.

The Supreme Court left in place on Monday President Donald Trump’s ban on bump stocks, turning away an appeal from owners of the device and gun rights groups.

Last year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives banned bump stock devices — attachments that essentially allow shooters to fire semiautomatic rifles continuously with one pull of the trigger.
A group of bump stock owners and Second Amendment groups sought to challenge how the administration went about banning the devices.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was appointed to the court by Trump, wrote a statement saying he agrees the current case should not be heard and that the court was correct not to intervene, but he was concerned with how the lower court handled the issue.
“Justice Gorsuch’s separate opinion isn’t about the merits of the bump stocks rule, but rather whether the lower court applied the correct standard of review in considering those merits. The court’s denial here suggests that the justices are willing to let lower court litigation over the controversial Trump administration rule run its course before deciding if — and how — to intervene,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

Here is what Gorsuch wrote.

The law hasn’t changed, only an agency’s interpretation of it. And these days it sometimes seems agencies change their statutory interpretations almost as often as elections change administrations. How, in all this, can ordinary citizens be expected to keep up—required not only to conform their conduct to the fairest reading of the law they might expect from a neutral judge, but forced to guess whether the statute will be declared ambiguous; to guess again whether the agency’s initial interpretation of the law will be declared “reasonable”; and to guess again whether a later and opposing agency interpretation will also be held “reasonable”? And why should courts, charged with the independent and neutral interpretation of the laws Congress has enacted, defer to such bureaucratic pirouetting?

Despite these concerns, I agree with my colleagues that the interlocutory petition before us does not merit review. The errors apparent in this preliminary ruling might yet be corrected before final judgment. Further, other courts of appeals are actively considering challenges to the same regulation. Before deciding whether to weigh in, we would benefit from hearing their considered judgments—provided, of course, that they are not afflicted with the same problems. But waiting should not be mistaken for lack of concern.

His was the dissenting opinion, the only “justice” who expressed any problems with it all.  And if the Supreme Court had heard the case and assigned it to Gorsuch to write the opinion, he could have spent less time declaring the whole thing unconstitutional.

Thus, the Supreme Court has no balls.


Comments

  1. On March 3, 2020 at 2:15 am, Dan said:

    The SCOTUS almost never hears 2A cases….because they don’t want to have rule on them. Accepting 2A cases would require the court to do one of two things. Squash 2A rights and OPENLY SHOW to the world they will not support the blatant clear and undeniable right elucidated by that Amendment OR they could issue ruling supporting 2A rights and rule in favor of it on the issue before them. But since even the most conservative justice on that court is a gun hating liberal they refuse to do anything that supports our rights. For them the safest course of action is to do nothing regarding the Second Amendment and allow the lower courts to do all the dirty work. With the murder of Justice Scalia ANY chance the Second Amendment had at being helped by these black robed pirates died.

  2. On March 3, 2020 at 9:30 am, X said:

    So much for due process and uncompensated taking. Fifth Amendment — dead.

  3. On March 3, 2020 at 11:00 am, Frank Clarke said:

    What it shows is that the Republicans are not qualitatively different than Democrats when it comes to the 2nd amendment. I wonder how long that lesson will take to sink in.

  4. On March 3, 2020 at 11:23 am, Fred said:

    @Dan, I don’t think that Thomas, the most constitutionally adherent of them all, is a gun hating liberal. If a case were taken, and the majority opinion was that all gun laws are null and void, he would vote for it. I’m pretty sure of this.

  5. On March 3, 2020 at 11:32 am, Herschel Smith said:

    @Fred,

    I agree.

    As for Gorsuch, he would come close, and he obviously had problems with this latest, but didn’t have the horsepower among his fellow members of SCOTUS to make anything happen.

  6. On March 3, 2020 at 12:07 pm, penses said:

    I, hypocrite.
    “A Constitutional originalist…like his predecessor Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch believes the US Constitution should be construed as it was by its original drafters.”

    More garbage like this at oyez.org

    I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.

  7. On March 3, 2020 at 2:18 pm, Fred said:

    “And why should courts, charged with the independent and neutral interpretation of the laws Congress has enacted, defer to such bureaucratic pirouetting?” – Gorsuch

    And now, dear Supreme Court Justice, you understand; why should we, the American people adhere to any such edicts all, or in any case whatsoever?

    Also, I’m pretty tired of worthless lawyering. It ain’t that hard to read the constitution and determine the best “clause” by which to attack a government reg, and make a cogent case. Sometimes I think that the pro 2A lawyers are just part of the game and don’t really care one whit about truth or duties or rights at all. Yes, the SCOTUS doesn’t take a lot of 2A cases, and that might be a good thing, because most of them should be sent back down if for no other reason than a ridiculously flawed premise from the start.

  8. On March 3, 2020 at 8:49 pm, penses said:

    Another example of “conservatism conserves nothing.”

    Every Supreme Court decision should be either 9-0 or 0-9. Its either Constitutional or it is not. Simple Dead White Male Logic based on Christian principles. St. Thomas Aquinas covers it in detail.

    Which poses the question, why is a Supreme Court necessary.

    The Constitutional Convention was called to rewrite the Articles of Confederation. Those documents were immediately trashed and the doors locked. Everything from that point on was done in secret [sound familiar].

    All notes taken during the sessions were destroyed at the end of the day’s deliberations by the Free Mason usurpers whose hidden agenda was to destroy the eight year old Confederacy of States and establish a central government, a union under the three headed hydra of President, Congress and Supreme Court.

    Their propaganda [The Federalist Papers] worked on the original deplorables and the Constitution became the law of the land with a few crumbs thrown to the serfs [the first ten amendments]. The AntiFederalist Papers make for an interesting read.

    What had been a federation of independent states that could come and go as they pleased became a union and membership was mandatory and any decisions made by the three branches of government applied to all of the constituent parts [since the word state implies an independence to act on your own].

    The final test came in 1860 when South Carolina seceded from the Union. The CSA was destroyed along with “states rights.” If a state could not secede then there was no free association of states which made the Union one single entity, not thirteen or fortyeight or fifty.

    Jefferson Davis was arrested and charged with treason but was never tried. If an independent judge ruled that secession was Constitutitonal it could have really messed things up.

    The Supreme Court was a necessary cog in the wheel to keep the independent states at bay until their eventual dissolution by Mr. Lincoln. After the WBTS the Supremes leaned more and more toward establishing law instead of ruling on its “constitutionality.” Interstate commerce, segregation, busing, abortion, gun ownership, same sex marriage–what few states rights that were left after the WBTS have been confiscated by the Monarchs in Robes.

    The Union has come full circle. Today we have federal judges telling the President his job. A Chief Executive that was given plenipotentiary powers by the Founding Masons has been castrated by a Pandora’s Box of evil maligned judges who much like the police make up the law out of penumbras and other such commie nonsense.

    Go figure.

  9. On March 3, 2020 at 10:08 pm, penses said:

    One item I overlooked and the most important is jury nullification.

    The jury was original designed to judge the law and its intent. If the jury found the law to be “causing or intending to cause harm or evil” and not in the best interests of the community the jury could pronounce the statue in question null and void.

    The devils in black robes have nullified jury nullification. Judges now instruct the jury on how the law should be interpreted reversing 800 yrs of common law. Some judges have thrown people in jail for mentioning the phrase in “their” court rooms.

    I was in a jury pool twenty years ago and at our indoctrination we were told by a judge that if he heard anyone say those words he would make sure they would be put on a complicated case that would last months. Home of the brave and land of the free to do as you are told.

  10. On March 4, 2020 at 10:47 am, revjen45 said:

    Roberts is more concerned with SCOTUS’s optics than Constitutional principles, and the rest (with the exception maybe of Justice Thomas) are just black robed .gov shysters.

  11. On March 7, 2020 at 1:24 pm, penses said:

    revjen45 said: Roberts is more concerned with SCOTUS’s optics

    Yes, the “optics” are important, because they want to be invited to all the Washington parties and be wined and dined like the crowing cocks they are and let everyone know that they are untouchable.

    The judiciary, along with the corrupt lawyers, have taken control of the law by carefully managing the evidence and testimony giving themselves the ultimate power to solve disputes. “One recent Chief Justice declared that the intentions of the framers of the Constitution were irrelevant to the current judicial responsibility, and that, consequently, the Supreme Court is to function as a ‘continuing constitutional convention.’…Lacking the protection of law, the citizen is encompassed by the statutory constructions of lawless people who wield power” Judges and lawyers have granted themselves total power of the law and your life.

    This corrupt system creates the illusion of legality by operating behind police enforcement of the “law” and the prison system. Prisons are job insurance used by the State in arguing that the police are effective. And the prisons are always full because the law is always open to interpretation…penumbras. “Woodrow Wilson’s ideas on law provide an example of how this abstruse philosophical point has come to affect men of power. He believed that laws must be adjusted to fit facts, ‘because the law…is the expression of the facts in legal relationships. Laws have never altered the facts; laws have always necessarily expressed the facts.’ Laws must change because they are based on sentiments that ‘express the highest promise of the deepest necessity of these times.'” Spoken like a true totalitarian. Hitler used similar language in his rise to power.

    And the innocent are the most likely to suffer. “We can expect, therefore, that when the sentiments shift from nursing homes to gas chambers as the answer to the problems of the elderly, the laws presumably must comply.”

    Drunk on power, judges have replaced God, believing the myth that laws can improve anything. Their decisions are meant to replace good manners and moral responsibility with all encompassing regulations. Decency and virtue have been replaced with intersectionality. If it feels good do it, and if anybody objects, we will throw them in jail.

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You are currently reading "Supreme Court Leaves Bump Stock Ban In Place", entry #23517 on The Captain's Journal.

This article is filed under the category(s) Politics,Second Amendment and was published March 2nd, 2020 by Herschel Smith.

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