The Old Blog in the Desert

Written by an Old-Timey Observer, who still reads the Constitution from a rickety porch with a view of common sense and knows snake oil when poured.

Now, friends, I’ve been around long enough to see a man claim the moon was cheese and another try to sell the Brooklyn Bridge—but I ain’t never seen a circus quite like Congress when it gets the notion to outlaw things it doesn’t understand. Here we are again, back in the echoing halls of modern-day Rome, with the Senators and Representatives of Nevada—Jacky Rosen and Dina Titus by name—trotting out their trusty old steed, the BUMP Act.

For those unfamiliar with the current parade of foolishness, a bump stock is a curious contraption—essentially a way to make a rifle jiggle like it drank too much coffee. It allows a semi-automatic rifle to simulate–-that’s the word the big city folks like to use–rapid fire. That right there is what’s got the busybodies in Congress tying their petticoats in knots again.

These same lawmakers are returning the BUMP Act, a legislative mule beaten more times than a rented burro. It comes after the Supreme Court gave the boot to the ATF’s ban, calling it what it was–an executive sleight of hand with no footing in federal law.

But what is the law, dear reader, when feelings are involved? You see, bump stocks gained infamy after the tragic One October shooting in Las Vegas—a horror no soul with a heart would ever shrug off.

But here’s the rub–the law ain’t supposed to get written in the tears of tragedy. It’s supposed to be stone carved in reason, liberty, and sense. When our Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, it doesn’t sprinkle fine print saying, “unless something awful happens, in which case we’ll burn the Bill of Rights and start fresh.”

And let us not overlook the peculiar irony that bump stocks are for the disabled shooter—folks who lack the full use of both hands or suffer from tremors. For them, it was a workaround, a way to enjoy a right granted not by man but by God and affirmed by the Founders.

So, one might ask, in all earnestness, whether banning the bump stock runs afoul of another statute—the Americans with Disabilities Act. We make ramps for wheelchairs and talk-to-text for the mute, but Heaven helps a disabled man who wants to go plinking cans with dignity.

Rosen called the Court’s ruling a “brazen reversal.” But some might call it a welcome return to the law as written, not as dreamed.

If it means anything, the law must stand even when inconvenient. Otherwise, we ain’t a nation of laws—we’re a nation of moods.

Now, I ain’t saying bump stocks are good or bad. That’s a matter for each man to chew over himself. But when Congress starts snipping at the Constitution like it’s trimming a rose bush, you’d best keep one eye on your liberty and the other on your lawmakers.

In the end, my friends, when the righteous fervor has passed–and the headlines have faded, it’s not just a hunk of plastic on the chopping block—it’s the notion that rights come first, even when tragedy tempts us otherwise.