Lumpy wrote:What's stopping them from "defining" any damn thing they want as an illegal weapon?
More from the opinion:
In United States v. Jiminez, 191 F. Supp. 3d 1038, 1045 (N.D. Cal. 2016), the court found that the definition of receiver in a parallel provision of the regulations, 27 C.F.R. §479.11, was unconstitutionally vague. Just as here, the court focused on the language of the regulation:
Tellingly, the Government makes no effort to parse the statutes or the CFR for proof of notice or clear standards. In effect, it concedes that the plain language of the law does not answer the vagueness challenge. This is tantamount to acknowledging that even if Jimenez had read the rules and regulations, he could not have known that the lower receiver of the AR-15 would be covered by them. That alone is a strong blow against the Government's position.
This vagueness issue isn't going away, so long as we have jurists who abide by the law. Any competent lawyer is going to raise it.
I wonder, sometimes, if the leftist panic over letting Trump replace RBG had more to do with this, with courts that will limit the arbitrary power of government bureaucrats to do whatever the hell they want, than with concerns over abortion.