Trump Announces He’s a Few Weeks From Banning Bump Stocks

Tenth Amendment Center – by Joe Wolverton, II

President Donald Trump promises that he is “just a few weeks” from issuing regulations that would outlaw bump fire stocks.

“We’re knocking out bump stocks,” Trump said at a White House news conference on October 1. “We’re in the final two or three weeks, and I’ll be able to write out bump stocks.”  

This Republican president’s promise to “write out” bump fire stocks sounds suspiciously like his Democratic predecessor’s claim to possess the power to use his phone and pen to make law.

“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” Barack Obama proclaimed in 2014. “And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions,” he added.

This two-party, one policy situation is decades old. Regarding the presidential penchant for disarming the American people, I am reminded of a story I wrote in January 2014:

“In an executive ‘Fact Sheet’ issued January 3 by the White House, the president purports to establish new guidelines for “keep[ing] Guns out of Potentially Dangerous Hands.”

NOTE: Originally published at The New American Magazine and reposted here with permission from the author.

The next paragraph of that story can now be applied to both President Obama and President Trump:

“What President Obama — a former part-time law professor — seems not to understand is that every time he issues some executive order, presidential finding, or ‘fact sheet,’ he is exceeding the constitutional limits on his power and thereby violating his oath of office.”

All you need to do is change the last name of the president and change the words “fact sheet” to “memorandum” and the story is no different.

President Trump is exercising that same unconstitutional “authority” to infringe significantly on the rights protected by the Second Amendment, specifically, the right to “keep and bear arms.”

Trump’s attack on the Second Amendment in the form of banning bump fire stocks should come as no surprise.

In fact, back in February the president issued an official memorandum ordering the Department of Justice “to dedicate all available resources to complete the review of the comments received, and, as expeditiously as possible, to propose for notice and comment a rule banning all devices that turn legal weapons into machineguns.” Lest there be any misunderstanding, the memo identifies the device in question as “bump fire stocks and similar devices.”

For those of you counting on the National Rifle Association (NRA) to come to the defense of the Second Amendment, you probably don’t want to read any further.

The NRA released the following statement regarding federal regulation of bump fire stocks:

The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.

So, no help from the NRA for Americans who believed the group to be defenders of the Second Amendment.

Of course, such a statement isn’t surprising considering that the very same press release reveals that the NRA doesn’t understand the purpose of the Second Amendment.

“In an increasingly dangerous world, the NRA remains focused on our mission: strengthening Americans’ Second Amendment freedom to defend themselves, their families and their communities,” the statement reads.

Wrong.

Our Founding Fathers were not concerned about protecting a man’s right to keep his home and family safe from “danger.” Our Founding Fathers protected the individual’s right to keep and bear arms because they knew that such was the only way to avoid being enslaved by tyrants.

They knew from their study of history that a tyrant’s first move was always to disarm the people, and generally to claim it was for their safety, and to establish a standing army so as to convince the people that they didn’t need arms to protect themselves, for the tyrant and his professional soldiers would do it for them. Sound familiar?

Consider this gem from William Blackstone, a man of immense and undeniable influence on the Founders and their understanding of rights, civil and natural.

In Volume I of his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Blackstone declares “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.”

Would anyone in America — or the world, for that matter — argue that the “sanctions of society and laws” are sufficient to “restrain violence” or oppression?

Thus, the people must be armed.

Commenting on Blackstone’s Commentaries, eminent Founding Era jurist and constitutional scholar St. George Tucker put a finer point on the purpose of protecting the natural right of all people to keep and bear arms. He wrote:

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

Enough said.

As for President Trump, he has done many things consistent with his solemn oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. His issuing of a regulation to shrink the scope of the Second Amendment is not one of them, however.

It’s this easy: Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution grants federal lawmaking power exclusively to the Congress.

Regardless of the word he uses to describe it, any time the president orders the executive branch to create law by executive decree, he is usurping the authority of the legislature.

Finally, in his memo, President Trump writes that he was motivated to begin the process of banning bump fire stocks “after the deadly mass murder in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 1, 2017.”

No matter how many people are clamoring for protection, no matter how many madmen go on murderous sprees, the president is not constitutionally authorized to take “executive actions” that encroach upon rights protected by the Constitution — in this case, the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Apart from his work as a journalist, Joe Wolverton, II is a professor of American Government at Chattanooga State and was a practicing attorney until 2009. He lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Since 2000, Joe has been a featured contributor to The New American magazine. Most recently, he has written a cover story article on the Tea Party movement, as well as a five-part series on the unconstitutionality of Obamacare.

Tenth Amendment Center

14 thoughts on “Trump Announces He’s a Few Weeks From Banning Bump Stocks

  1. I wonder why this is…I’m certainly no gun expert but I know several people who are. I reviewed the hotel room photos from las vegas with a few guys i would consider “experts” and no one could find a bump stock in any of them! We played “where’s Waldo” with those pictures for a long time and couldn’t find anything that looked like a bump stock…or burnt carpet from the shells, or how a 65year old man removed an 800 pound glass window by himself, either….but I digress….

    1. There was footage floating around the web for maybe three days (at most) of people in the crowd shooting up the crowd -scrubbed from the net.

      Straight false flag or perhaps other op gone wrong, such as a gun deal.
      The FBI sure moved in fast, as though they were ready.

      The 800 pound window was taken care of by the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

  2. The likelihood that a bump stock was used is about the same that someone who reads FTT was “the” shooter.

    The audio alone screams multiple shooters and automatic fire.

    This time it was ‘bump stocks’ as the fall guy. Keep chiseling away they will. Seems they don’t know you can only poke a peaceful tiger so many times.

      1. He’s huffin that damn hairspray, hes got a chemical mask with a 1/4 hose comin out of it connected to a extra hair hold type spray for maximum effect. He fogs up the mask, then inhales like a ghetto bitch, lindsey Graham sitting right there with his dress and heels on giggling like a 15 year old.

        1. That paints a picture that probably ACTUALLY exists!

          C’mon trumpet-blowers, chime in on how to defend YOUR kosher kommander-in-chief. Admit you’ve been cheering for a zionist it’s-not-real joo puppet and admit YOU’RE gonna have to fight for it because he and his joo friends fooled you AGAIN. Stop falling for it you friggin’ pathetic pansy commie supporters!

          1. This guy is as phony as a china town Gucci hand bag. Hes lied about everything he ran on, people dig the guy because they believe his bullshit about a better economy, when it couldn’t be the farthest thing from the truth. The national debt has grown more than any other time in history. How the hell can that mean a better economy???

            How can a 8 piece chicken meal, with 2 sides, 4 biscuits costing a staggering $25.00 dollars at Kentucky fried chicken mean a better economy?

            The idiot bans bump stocks, what a moron… these clowns do this shit to take our eyes off the real problem.

  3. Congress has no authority or power to violate the bill of rights, obviously. That said, this criminal corporate maritime gov will do what ever the fk it wants as there can be no higher authority above them, in their creation.

    There is no law, there is abject tyranny…. Our day approaches, it is either us and our children, or it will be left up to the next generations thereafter, to whom they have no spine, backbone or will…

    we shall be lost, lest we begin the sacrifices, that came before us, whom gave us the pathways of being free…

    As bitter is the pill to swallow, Henry has spelled it out, it is us, you and me, who will have to enforce the bill of rights where they reside, in us. As they the enforcers of tyranny, attack and attempt to destroy our bill of rights thru us, each and every day.

    We must decide at what point we resist, it is personal… 1 man, 3 and then 4, a family then a neighborhood, then a regional area and soon as the blood spills and flows, it will begin… then those who are alive must go all out on this criminal system at every level, with only one prize in mind…. The Bill of Rights as a corner stone of freedom….

    To all those past true freedom fighters, that fought in the original uprising, forgive us, forgive our lineage that extends back to you, for not stopping this evil tyranny at the outset, but know that your fire still lives and we will not let the usurpation happen again….

    This time, it stops, no compromises, no constitutions, no corporate governments….Freedom, Common Law courts and the bill of rights and the due process from that.

    And to the Glorious Trumpraeli, you maggot mthrfkr, may you be hung along with all the traitors you take heart with, we see you….you are naked.

    Enough………….

  4. Time for civil disobedience
    We have a right to own it
    So fuk off

    Every person in this country keep what’s yours
    And be ready to use it when the time comes

    I ain’t giving up a dam thing

  5. when the Revolution begins , dont sit on your couch wondering when it will reach you ( chances are it has already started and you are late to the party)

    top off your bug out bag , load up all your mags.
    slip on all your field gear, and step out into the world. and find good cover behind the enemies position

    If you stay on your couch and in your home thinking you can fight from that position , you will be dead and all your shit burned within 24 hours
    dont believe me ? ask the Davidians and Chris Dornor if I’m lying

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