Americans able to buy deadly ‘gangster weapons’ again as lobbying forces key concession from Trump officials
US citizens are free once more to buy some of the country’s most deadly firearms and gun accessories, after relentless lobbying by the gun industry and Republican politicians forced a concession from the Trump administration under the federal government shutdown.
As of this week, gun owners will be able to restart purchases of some of the most highly regulated weapons in the US, with the return to work of federal employees responsible for regulating the items now reclassified as “essential”. They include silencers, short-barreled rifles and vintage machine-guns produced before 1986.
Sales of those items had ground to a halt under the shutdown after federal examiners charged with regulating the purchases were furloughed. The examiners formed part of the NFA division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
How can you just start a part of the government without the rest like funding and everything? That’s a really bad precedent if trump can just activate and deactivate agencies at will…
The whole shutdown of government thing only came about via an opinion by the Attorney General in the 1980’s.
Also, Trump’s administration doesn’t seem to really care about precedent.