The ATF has started the embarrassing process of returning bump-stocks to their original owners after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the agency wrongfully determined they were machineguns, but only if the owners act within 90 days.
The ATF sent letters titled “Notice of Opportunity to Request Return of Bump Stock(s) in ATF Custody” last week. They include an address in Washington, D.C., and an email that the former owners can contact to arrange for the return of their property. Once the requests are processed, the letter states, “you will be contacted by someone from the local ATF field office to arrange retrieval of your bump stock(s).”
“In the interest of returning your item as soon as possible, please submit your claim form within 90 days of this letter,” the ATF states. “Bump stocks which remain unclaimed after that time may be considered unclaimed or abandoned and may be subject to disposal.”
Florida Carry, Inc., purchased an SSAR-15 bump stock from Slide Fire Solutions, Inc., for demonstration and educational purposes before the ban was enacted. It was surrendered to the ATF “under protest,” and Florida Carry became a co-plaintiff in Guedes v. ATF, along with the Firearms Policy Foundation, Damien Guedes, the Madison Society Foundation, Inc., and Shane Roden.
Florida Carry co-founder and co-executive director Sean Caranna was, once again, struck by the ATF’s arbitrariness in setting the 90-day deadline.
“Rather than simply returning people’s property, the ATF has established a bureaucratic and paperwork burden on law-abiding Americans in an attempt to run out the 90-day clock that the ATF has created without any statutory authority,” Caranna said. “Clearly, ATF leadership has learned nothing from the Supreme Court’s mandate that government agencies can’t make up new rules that are not expressly provided for by law.”
The ATF letter, which was sent last week to Florida Carry’s General Counsel, Eric Friday, cited the Supreme Court case Garland v. Cargill, stating: “The U.S. Supreme Court held that non-mechanical bump stock – a bump stock that relies on the forward pressure from the shooter’s non-trigger hand to force the rifle and trigger forward after recoil – is not a ‘machinegun’ as defined in the National Firearms Act. Accordingly, you are hereby notified that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is currently in possession of the bump stocks described above in which you may have an interest.”
The ATF never mentioned how the High Court chastised them for flip-flopping on what constitutes a machine gun:
“For many years, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) consistently took the position that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks were not machineguns. ATF abruptly changed course when a gunman using semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks fired hundreds of rounds into a crowd in Las Vegas, Nevada, killing 58 people and wounding over 500 more. ATF subsequently proposed a rule that would repudiate its previous guidance and amend its regulations to ‘clarify’ that bump stocks are machineguns. ATF’s Rule ordered owners of bump stocks either to destroy or surrender them to ATF to avoid criminal prosecution,” the Justices wrote in their opinion.
More than a dozen states, including Florida, still prohibit possession of bump stocks. The ATF warns that the owners will be held responsible for complying with state and local laws once the device is returned.
By arbitrarily establishing the 90-day return window, the ATF has created an internal precedent that it will likely use when it is ordered to return other firearm accessories that were unconstitutionally seized by its agents, including pistol braces, aftermarket triggers and more.
Lee Williams is a board member of Florida Carry, Inc.
This story is courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support pro-gun stories like this.
Does this mean Steven Paddock gets his bump stocks back?
Asking for a friend…
LOL, I think ol’ Steven is in a situation you don’t believe in…
Wouldn’t that imply that he actually used a bump stock in the first place 🤔?
Typical fascist, miner. Blame and punish everyone for the bad acts of one.
Dear Feces Digging Idiot:
Why don’t you exercise your option for a retroactive abortion and find out?
so basically they’re gonna drag their feet hoping that ruling will be reversed again (after November)!?
Pretty much! I could have bought a bump stock but decided they were a hunk of idiocy. Not having unlimited ammo they seemed pretty stupid. Just like when I was ignored in a gat shop after I warned the “cool kids” their pistol brace was going to be banned. And don’t forget who banned bumpy stock’s so there’s that🙄
Good thing they ignored you, it was terrible advice you offered all around. I don’t have any use for bump-stocks either, but no reason my whims should restrict others. Oh and F that ATF!
The onus should be on the ATF to go door to door, returning confiscated bump stocks. The owners should not be required to do anything at all. If ATF agents were knocking on doors to deliver the illegally confiscated items, they wouldn’t have time to harass gun store owners for a few months.
I will never register my guns. And I never did turn in my bumpstock. And I never turned in or registered by brace equipped weapons.
As President Donald Trump said, “fight!, fight!, fight!”
It was good old Donnyboy who wrote the Executive Order designating bump stocks as “machine guns”.
“It was good old Donnyboy who wrote the Executive Order designating bump stocks as “machine guns”.”
IRRC, Trump ordered the ATF to “look into” how to declare bump stocks machine guns; not an order declaring bump stocks to be machine guns.
And while I am at it, Trump would be a lame duck president immediately upon inauguration, with the Republicrats having no real talent to run as presidential candidate after 2028.
They went to homes and businesses in person, sometimes with full tactical teams ready to shoot, and stole them, make the ATF go back to the homes and businesses to return them in person.
this excuse of “oh, we don’t know who they belong to so people need to tell us” is BS. They sure knew where to go get them and who they belonged to then, they should already know and they should automatically be returning them without this illegal and unconstitutional timer of ‘ya got 90 days to tell us or else’.
Everyone one at ATF that had even the slightest thing to do with stealing the property from Amercian citizens, under threat of use of force some times, should be arrested and prosecuted. If you or I were to go to someones home and unlawfully take their property simply because we said we could, we would be arrested and prosecuted. There was no good faith to qualify for ‘qualified immunity’ here, basically SCOTUS has said as much by the case showing the ATF knew they were acting unlawfully and unconstitutionally in creating this abortion of a rule.
correction for : “…in creating this abortion of a rule”
should have been..
in creating these abortions of rules.
“Clearly, ATF leadership has learned nothing from the Supreme Court’s mandate that government agencies can’t make up new rules”
Sure they did. They learned to do it again. And why not? It did not hurt a bit the first time.
Well any gun owner who votes for a Democrat gets whatever they deserve.
Its time these folks understand that voting for Democrats is a sure way to destroy this Country. It should be clear that American Citizens take a back seat to criminals, illegals and the homeless. They need to wake up.
If they haven’t figured it out yet, they ain’t gonna. More likely they are more enamored with socialism or transvestites over their individual liberty, so vote accordingly.
Never did buy one. I thought $300 for a $10 piece of plastic was ludicrous. I was bump firing AK’s & AR’s without bump stocks in the early 1990’s. Was a waste of 8 cent AK rounds and 15 cent 5.56 rounds back then. Couldn’t imagine at today’s ammo prices. (Of course minimum wage was $4.35 or so then). Had the same accuracy as my first real MG shoot. I emptied a 32rd mag from a Cobray M11/nine at a can at 10 yards, never hit it once. SCOTUS definitely got this one correct as they don’t meet the federal coded definition of a machine gun.
Wow SLapshot, that was a trip down memory lane for me.
In the 1980s, when I was young and foolish (instead of being old and foolish like I am now), I scraped enough money together to get a mini-14, a few 30 round mags, and five(5) 20 round boxes of 223 ammo. Ammo was bought at the gun store at that time, with records kept, so expen$ive (Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet yet).
Off to the quarry I went, set up a dozen beer bottles (with a tarp underneath for clean-up), and blasted away a’la A-Team style, at about 10 yards. My ammo stash was converted to noise and hot brass in about 60-90 seconds. And just like in your case, no beer bottles were harmed, and the only damage done was to my finances.
I always remember this lesson when I hear about bump stocks, or even regular full auto weapons. Ammo is still too expensive, and I prefer to score hits on targets rather than just make noise.
(POST SCRIPT: my beer bottle blasting was actually just like the A-Team. It never occurred to me when watching it at the time, but never has so much ammo been expended, so many explosions and destruction of vehicles, etc. occurred without anyone getting as much as a scratch).
Harris Hides From Her Border Czar Role But Proudly Touts Closing Over 400 Gun Stores > https://www.shootingnewsweekly.com/2024/08/19/harris-hides-from-her-border-czar-role-but-proudly-touts-closing-over-400-gun-stores/
note: Harris hides from lots of things to keep from disclosing shes incompetent and wants her Kamunism installed. For example, ya notice how she doesn’t disclose she was the one Joe tasked with implementing his ‘Biden nomics’ that has ruined the economy while claiming it was a success while prices are 20% to 30% higher under biden nomics than they were under Trump’s economic policies. She doesn’t mention that Joe has printed so much money that we are now in debt and can’t afford to make the interest payments on our loans and are basically insolvent and bankrupt. And that’s how Biden played with the inflation numbers he claims are so low. He printed money we could not afford and that artificially lowered the numbers by putting that in the economy but artificially lowering inflation always results in price increases because its not really lower inflation plus he left out actual core inflation on purpose in his overall numbers because if actual core inflation was properly accounted for the true higher inflation would be revealed. Notice also how she claims price gouging in the ‘grocery market’ sector – ya know what the overall profit was for the grocery market sector in 2023… it was 1%, that’s not price gouging its barely surviving for an industry yet Harris claims that the ‘grocery market price gouging’ is responsible for the prices being up 20% to 30% for food under Biden – she is a liar. Then her gaslighting, for example… she was asked by a reporter how she was going to pay for her ‘economic policy’ and instead of answering the question she again did her standard Kamunism gaslighting > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSeCUOJYrHc
I don’t know how people can claim that prices are up 20-30% since Joe and the Kameltoe took charge. That is just not reality. Literally everything that I actually BUY is more or less doubled in price. That works out to 100% higher, not 20-30%.
So in other words, all those stocks that were turned in to ATF have been packed away in warehouses all this time, at the taxpayers’ expense? This indicates that they knew they were on questionable legal grounds all along.
This is all well and good for owners of these accessories; to whom do the manufacturers turn to get their businesses back?
“So in other words, all those stocks that were turned in to ATF have been packed away in warehouses all this time, at the taxpayers’ expense?”
Most likely most of them destroyed already, which may be why the ATF is stalling and doing this ’90 day’ thing. Most likely if you did their ’90 day’ thing, 90 days or longer after it ended you would get a check instead of the stock because they had already destroyed your property they stole and they are hoping you will not complain about it because you got a check. And if you do complain about it they will claim you were fairly compensated for the crime they committed against you and if you take it to court it will be very expensive and might take years to reach a conclusion. So in the end they would end up screwing you anyway, plus get away with their crime.
and basically they would, by doing that, have created a ‘defacto’ ‘mandatory buy back’ if you were one of the ones they surrendered them voluntarily not knowing the difference between an unconstitutional and illegal action coupled with a ‘defacto’ law that isn’t a law at all.
Its (mostly) easy to tell the difference when it comes to things like this. Anytime a government agency creates a ‘rule’ telling you that you can’t have something property wise but its not defined in statute specifically that you can’t have it and the government agency enforces their own ‘rule’ as though it is law – its 99.999999999999999999999999 (into infinity goes here)% of the time an illegal and unconstitutional action.
I find it laughable that ATF might still have the surrendered stocks to return to those who gave them up in the first place. I’d not hold my breath.
For those who think ATF should’ve “learned something” from the SCOTUS decision- they did- way back, whether we’re talking Heller, McDonald, Bruen, Dobbs, Vullo, or any other case reversing Leftist doctrine:
Unless the Fed enforces compliance of the latest ruling, there is little many Americans, especially in large, “blue” states and metro areas can do for relief and restoration of their rights.
The cancer of the elite politicians must be removed, hopefully at the ballot box. Many cities and states are living exactly as they deserve for not giving a rip about what God gave them as an inheritance as a citizen in the US. We have a responsibility to preserve and maintain these rights and it involves effort. Governments of every type only seek additional powers and controls, it is what they were established to do.
“I find it laughable that ATF might still have the surrendered stocks to return to those who gave them up in the first place. I’d not hold my breath.”
Same here, this will likely end up as a class-action lawsuit, and the lawyers will get the majority of the ‘compensation’ check…
Everyone knows damn well the F-ATF held on to every bump stock they stole from citizens, every last one of them got an evidence tag and was placed on a shelf for later action ie. prosecution of it’s purchaser.
They say that god created man but sam colt made them equal.
The rich, criminal or law abiding, will always have machine guns.
But now, Cody Wilson has made the “rich and the poor equal.” Because low cost 3D printed gun parts, are now available to everyone.
Now even those on food stamps, can afford to have a machine gun.
How about that!!!
It seems in this post-Chevron world, the ATF doesn’t have the authority to decide what is and isn’t a machine gun….or any other firearm for that matter.
“ATF Creates Arbitrary 90-Day Window to Return Bump Stocks to Owners”
It is called “the long game”. Make owning firearms so onerous, people will simply tire of all the ways govt can force you to comply with an unending stream of infringements. And, if one method is rulled illegal, a simple modification will re-start the clock.
Look around. The arc of history is against freedom. Get what you can, while you can; don’t expect there will be anything left for future generations.
From the royal decree to the court cases to the shuttered businesses to the final cut check to compensate for the stolen and destroyed property how much did this whole circus cost us?
You’d think all the “gimmie gibs” leftists would rather have had that money go to one of their more “gibs” worthy projects rather than be burned up into global heating carbon. Sure, dumbass Trump got the ball rolling but the rest of the bureaucracy could have stopped it anytime. Wasn’t that the self-admitted role of the deep state, to protect the American people and all fence jumpers from Trump? Just goes to show that the ATFs mission is to kill the 2nd A.
I’m thinking they need the time to determine how many bump stocks they need and to find a supplier, probably already destroyed those that were confiscated…
“More than a dozen states, including Florida, still prohibit possession of bump stocks.”
Huh?
Doesn’t federal law supersede state law? Federal law was overturned, they are not machineguns…
“Doesn’t federal law supersede state law?”
SC is charry of universal application of decisions beyond the plaintiffs. Each violation must be litigated, separately, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction.
Chary.
What Sam wrote (as corrected), plus, remember that Garland didn’t win on 2A grounds. He won because the AFT improperly rewrote the rule. Technically, Federal law was not overturned. NFA and GCA still stand, as well as state and local laws that may echo or expand the provisions of those laws.
“…Garland didn’t win on 2A grounds. He won because the AFT improperly rewrote the rule.”
Indeed. ATF can put their interpretation out as a matter of rule making, today. By going through the process correctly, the nation could still end up with a ban.
The SC ruling did not clarify what a machinegun is (what the NFA describes), but voided the process ATF used.
Sad to note, the ATF as it is described in th
above appearing article is a tax collection and law enforcement executive agency. They have exactly zero law making duty, powers or authority. They never did have, a fact that they to easily forget. Of course, part of the blame lies in and with The Congress, which is a law making entity for allowing the usurpation of powers that ATF is blatantly guilty of. Now that the USSC has finally told the ATF where to get off, which it appears to have done, perhaps some of the problems with ATF self-aggrandizmemt will become a thing of the past. It is so hoped however the fact that the fox still tries to enter the hen house must be remembered, and guarded against.