This sucks. This is leaning further into the Major Questions Doctrine that SCOTUS has been pushing, where agencies and their actually knowledgeable, employed scientists and technical experts, have no real control over regulatory policies, and instead are beholden to Congress and judges to decide e.g. how many ppm of a chemical is safe for people to drink.
Thats a good thing. Unelected officials should not be passing laws.
Regulations are not laws. They are the specific implementation mechanisms of laws.
For example, Congress passes a law like the Clean Water Act. But that law doesn’t (and cannot feasibily) lay out every single individual rule necessary to ensure the clean water that it seeks to protect and provide.
For example, it contains a section that requires Water Quality Standards to be set by each state, for themselves. However, if a state does not create them, the act authorizes the EPA to create a standard for them.
That’s not the EPA “creating laws”, it’s the EPA implementing the congressionally-passed CWA.
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They’re not “passing laws.” They define the minute technical details that Congress can’t cover completely or doesn’t understand. Here’s an example:
Elected Congress: Don’t sell moldy sausage.
Unelected FDA: Ok, here’s how long you can safely store sausage below this temperature. If that date is passed or the sausage has been exposed to higher temperature for this amount of time, it must be discarded to greatly reduce the possibility of selling moldy sausage.
Unelected Judge: Mom said if it’s not green it’s not moldy. Just don’t sell green sausage boys.
Unelected SCOTUS: Yup, that’s how it’s done.
More like they can still make those ruling, but now instead of them being challenged solely on a costitutional basis, they can be challenged on whether or not they follow the law in question.
Defining moldy is one thing. Declaring shoestrings to be machine guns is another
Congress is the one who passed the GCA, FOPA, and NFA. If you don’t like the definition of a machine gun being a firearm that fires more than once with a single actuation of the trigger (and the parts that allow them to), blame them, not the ATF.
Making owning shoes a felony is ridiculous, and I honestly cant believe you’re arguing in good faith.
And a shoe string does not create a firearm that fires more than once with a single actuation of the trigger.
The ATF went completely off the rails with that one, and it shouldnt have been a challenge of how constitutional it was, it should have been a challenge that it didn’t fit the law.
They didn’t make owning shoes a felony. Rich of you too accuse ME of arguing in bad faith in the same breath you say that.
If you use a string to make a reciprocating charging handle pull the trigger as it returns to battery after firing, why is that less “legitimate” in converting the gun into automatic firing than using an auto-sear? In both cases, the gun fires multiple times with a single pull of the trigger by a person.
Okay, it was everyone who owned a gun and a shoestring. Sure, gun owners are no longer allowed to lace up their shoes. Heres a link to the letter. Thats a sensible rule. https://old.reddit.com/r/progun/comments/p46y9n/just_a_reminder_that_in_2007_the_atf_classified/
So no, gun owners with shoes are not felons, unless they combine those 2 things to make a machinegun. Obviously.
This shifts balance from unelected officials who can be fired by the president (administrative officials) towards unelected officials who can’t be (judges). It doesn’t actually reduce regulatory power, just puts that regulatory power under the supervision and review of even less accountable officials.