Bump stocks were in fact ruled as legal by the ATF for over a decade, then abruptly ruled illegal with no act of congress to justify it. The contrary claim is nonsense.
The article wrongly claims “rate of fire” is related to being a machine gun. Just not true.
In administrative law, agencies are not forever bound by what they decide in a private ruling letter, like the ones from years ago allowing a few individual manufacturers to make bump stocks. Those prior ruling letters did not have the force of law and were not regulations. 1/2
The law outlawed machine guns or any hardware that would convert a semi to a gun that fired multiple rounds per trigger pull.
I would actually say the atf policy was wrong before, not after