SCOTUS Accepts Review of Bump Stock Ban

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44 AMP, I think that is one of the issues presented.

There's a broad issue about what an agent of the exec can do with regulation, and part of that is how a court will address challenges to regs or agent's action.

There's an issue of whether a reg is faithful to the legislation, whether a court will look to the text of the legislation or divine a wider intent that the agent is allowed to pursue through regs, and whether we as individuals are bound by whatever the agent thinks that day or whether the agent is bound by his own prior interpretations (lenity).

The court could address some of those without engaging on the others.
 
There is, for me, also a matter of trust, and consistency involved in these matters.

In particular, the basic point of the govt saying "this is not illegal under existing law", and then turning around and saying the same thing IS illegal under existing law, and the existing law has not been changed, I have issues with trust when they do that.

They're STILL doing it right now, with pistol stocks (and other things not just gun things).

A horse is not a camel, and witches are not made of wood just because a regulator says they are.

The High Court will rule on those points they consider relevant in the case before them. The rest of the country will adopt the ruling, and expand on it, or ignore as much of it as they think they can get away with. This is, sadly, the way people behave.
 
44 AMP said:
There is, for me, also a matter of trust, and consistency involved in these matters.
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Trust is the other side of one kind of authority. I invest the old dictionary on my shelf with greater authority than an online source that may have been revised recently; I trust it more to reflect normal use. Perhaps the greatest authority one can have is to be trusted.

There is a different kind of authority that rests not on trust, but power. That stock we said was fine even if you put it to your shoulder? We have a different opinion today, so choke on it. That's a position that can gain compliance in the face of punishment, but destroys trust.
 
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The bump stock rule has fallen. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-976_e29g.pdf

The oral argument in this was painful to hear. Some of the justices had a difficult time grasping how a trigger works, and the advocates weren't stellar teachers on this point. Since this is about how triggers work and what the law says, not knowing how triggers work and not caring what congress passed are significant impediments to resolving the issue coherently.
 
I'm in Florida, so this has no effect on me. That Rick Scott is an odd duck.

Maybe the attorneys on this case should have partnered with patent attorneys. To prosecute patents, you have to join a special bar open only to people with STEM degrees. My first boss as an attorney was a mechanical engineer. An engineer patent attorney with an ME degree would be used to explaining mechanical things.

Sad fact: many attorneys are people who could not hope to get into medical school because they have no STEM aptitude. They major in silly things like Political Science because they're a step too slow in calculus class.

A lot of not-brilliant lawyers end up defending insurance companies and practicing family law and criminal law. IP lawyers are at the top of the intellectual heap.
 
Sad fact: many attorneys are people who could not hope to get into medical school because they have no STEM aptitude. They major in silly things like Political Science because they're a step too slow in calculus class.
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I resemble that remark. I actually enjoyed math so long as it didn't involve lots of arithmetic.

IP lawyers are at the top of the intellectual heap.
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They certainly seem to believe that.

My IP friend was a big deal in the polymers area, and also owned my apartment building. He came by to fix a leaky shower handle and went on a ten minute tirade about how the plumbing must have been done by carpenter and showed me how something hadn't been joined with teflon tape and what the molecules in the tape or copper do with each other and how any chemist would that.... When he was done, I asked if it was a problem that the pipe down to the sloped downward. He looked confused. "Why?" I'm not a chemist or anything, but doesn't water flow downhill?

IP lawyers are interesting to me that both law and engineering involve an over-writing of a person's native language, a process that isn't only accretive, and IP counsel are hit with that twice.

I don't know whether nine liberal arts degrees are to blame for the character of that oral argument, but listening to it gave me a sense of what it must feel like for an engineer to explain his testimony to me.
 
In fairness, it's not a very tall heap.

My old Evidence professor liked to remind us that lawyer's weren't that smart. He loved to say, "You're smarter than the average bear," and he didn't mean it as a compliment.
 
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