1、CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress Legal SidebarLegal Sidebari i Does ATFs Bump-Stock Ban Comport with the APA? May 8, 2019 Congressional interest in regulating “bump stock” devices grew after authorities discovered that the perpetrator of the October 2017 mass shootin
2、g in Las Vegas had attached to his semiautomatic firearms an accessory that allowed his rifles to effectively mimic the firing capabilities of a fully automatic weapon (e.g., a machine gun). But to date, federal legislation has not been enacted that expressly regulates bump stocks. At the administra
3、tive level, though, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) banned these deviceseffective March 26, 2019in a final rule published in the Federal Register 90 days earlier on December 26, 2018. ATF achieved this ban by classifying bump-stock devices as “machineguns,” as that ter
4、m is defined in the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) and the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA). Several bump-stock owners and advocates challenged ATFs rule in multiple lawsuits, arguing, among other things, that ATF promulgated the rule in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). In one
