“Sporting purpose” has to go

I just finished reading the ATF Study on the Importability of Certain Shotguns. Say Uncle and Sebastian already have posts up so check those out too.

My take away is that the ATF have a tough job in trying to enforce the import restrictions on firearm not suitable for sporting purposes. They struggle with how to define “sporting purpose”. They concluded IPSC and USPSA don’t qualify because those sports didn’t exist when the 1968 Congress passed the law and hence they must have meant the types of sports common at the time. In this case originalism works against us. If you recall the 1998 report (I probably have it around someplace I remember reading it and getting upset at the time) they pointed out that if the “sporting purpose” restriction is to mean anything at all then it must be a rather static definition. If it were not then some sport could be invented such that the restricted gun was particularly well suited for that particular sport and the restriction would have to be lifted. Hence the law would become meaningless.

I understand where they are coming from and once you accept they are tasked with enforcing this stupid law they are probably taking the most rational approach. For this reason I mostly give them a pass on this issue. Our real beef should be with Congress and possibly the courts.

Yes, it seems like the “sporting purpose” requirement should be easy to get thrown out by the courts because the Heller decision said the Second Amendment wasn’t about duck hunting—it was about self-defense and the militia. Hence any firearm that was useful for self-defense and military service (as per the Miller decision as well) would be explicitly protected by the Second Amendment. In the recent study they explicitly call out military purpose shotguns and accessories as being grounds to forbid the importation of them. Just exactly backwards from Miller and Heller. There might also be an “unconstitutionally vague” approach that could be used here too.

But to a large extent taking things to court is like rolling the dice unless you have lots of case law backing you up. In our situation there is probably a lot of case law against us and it will have to be evaluated at a higher level before things go our way. Hence I think the first thing that should be done is to get to Congress to remove the “sporting purpose” language from firearms law. The worst case downside of failure with this approach is things don’t change. In the case of taking things to court the worst case downside is that we get some terrible precedent established that is difficult or impossible to get out from under and it affects far more firearms than those being blocked from importation.

One of the most interesting sections of the study is actually a little off topic.

The following is from page 2 when discussing the background of the sporting purpose language:

This section addresses Congress’ concern that the United States had become a “dumping ground of the castoff surplus military weapons of other nations,” in that it exempted only firearms with a generally recognized sporting purpose.

I read this to mean that congress was trying to protect domestic manufactures from competition by foreign nations. Although I suppose it could also be interpreted as a concern that foreign nations would be able to more easily upgrade their equipment by getting cash for their old gear.

Share

8 thoughts on ““Sporting purpose” has to go

  1. The funny thing is that as I was reading it, it seemed like they were almost begging the BATF to redefine sporting to include practical shooting.

  2. Of course my first statement is that Washington did NOT cross the Delaware to get to his Duck Blind before Sun-up. “Sporting Purposes” should only exist to regulate a sport. If you want to say I am illegally hunting with a Saiga, or a Striker, fine. If my club wants to tell me I can’t bust sporting clays with them, fine. But if a gun is sufficient to kill a man in combat situations, then it should be expressly PERMITTED under 2A.

    That being said on the originalist argument, they didn’t have steel plate and bowling pin matches back in the 60s? Those sports are commonly shot with shotguns as well as handguns, and the more “Combat style” the tool is, the better suited it is…

  3. Bowling pin shoots were invented in the mid 70s.

    IPSC/USPSA uses steel plates now. I don’t know if they always did. But IPSC wasn’t invented until 1976.

    The first Steel Challenge match was in 1981. There were certainly people shooting at steel plates before that. But not in an such a manner to call it an organized sport.

    Hence, I think the ATF is probably correct on the “sporting purpose” history.

  4. Thanks for the info, Joe. Still the idea that “Sports” aren’t evolving is a bit narrow minded. The Olympic biathalon now only uses rimfire rather than centerfire, and they have snowboarding.

    Seems like such an elitist argument …

  5. You know what this means, don’t you? An official arm of the Government has recognized Strict Construction. Maybe we should remind then, that the 2A is about arming the civil populace with MILITARY weapons, i.e., Full-auto, and possibly even grenades, with artillery to back up the infantry.

  6. I don’t know, I think this one might well be worth an all-out assault on all fronts. Getting rid of “sporting purposes” would be a huge breakthrough IMHO, and after that bastion falls I can’t see most of the rest of it holding out very much longer.

  7. You know, we have some pretty cheesy gun laws in Canuckistan, but we don’t have a “Sporting Clause” nor do we have taxable items such as short shotguns, (bing image or google image “Dominion Arms Grizzly”) yeah I know comparing apples to oranges… Frustrating rules on both sides of the border…

    Here’s a SFW from flikr of the DA Grizzly
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/davevdb/4865054806/

  8. Joe,

    I think you’re giving them too much of a benefit of the doubt on the quote from page 2. I read it as:
    “If other nations dump their surplus weapons here, they will be easy for any one to obtain and we don’t want too many effective combat weapons in circulation”.

Comments are closed.