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Floor Speech

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Mr. RICKETTS.

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Mr. RICKETTS. Welcome to another day of the Democratic summer of show votes. We need to be clear why the majority leader is holding this show vote. The Supreme Court made a decision last week he didn't like. A 6- to-3 majority Supreme Court ruled the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives overstepped their authority when they tried to reclassify bump stocks as machineguns. The Supreme Court made the right decision. In January, I joined Senator Lummis and other colleagues filing an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to do what they did.

But the majority leader and his Democratic colleagues supported the gun-grabbing overreach. The majority leader decided to bring up a bill called the BUMP Act. He claims this bill will ban bump stocks. Just like his previously misnamed bills, if you actually read the bill, that is not what it does at all.

The BUMP Act targets common firearm accessories, not just bump stocks. This is from the text of the bill. The bill bans ``any manual, power-driven, or electronic device primarily designed, or redesigned, so that when the device is attached to a semiautomatic firearm, the device--[i] materially increases the rate of fire on the firearm.''

In short, this doesn't ban bump stocks. This bill would ban literally any item that makes a firearm easier and, in some cases, safer to shoot. We are talking about competition or adjustable triggers.

We are also talking about items that reduce the distance between a shooter's hand or trigger, like certain firearm stocks and grips. It is not just about bump stocks. That is why the disabled veterans hate this bill. I have heard about veterans in Nebraska who are concerned about this bill. Sometimes veterans who are disabled or elderly choose to adjust the stock or grip on a firearm to make it easier and safer to shoot. The Constitution protects their right to do so through the Second Amendment.

This bill would take that constitutional right away from the same men and women who fought for our Constitution.

The other problem with this bill is it doesn't even define what it is trying to regulate. The bill uses the phrase ``rate of fire'' 500 times. Three of those times, the bill said it would ban a device that materially increases the rate of fire in the firearm. Nowhere in the bill does it define what constitutes the ``rate of fire'' increase.

The other two times, it says it would ban a device that approximates the action of a rate of fire of a machinegun. But under Federal law, it is not the rate of fire that makes something a machinegun. Under 26 U.S.C. 5845(b), it is a mechanical function.

So either this ``rate of fire'' section was written by someone who had no idea what they are talking about, or it is a cynical attempt to include more firearm accessories than just bump stocks. I would bet the latter.

And let's be honest. Does anyone seriously believe this lawless Biden administration would interpret this law in a way that respects law- abiding gun owners? Not.

On this and other issues, the Biden administration has repeatedly expanded previous interpretations of our laws in ways that go far beyond what even the Obama administration was coupled with, and they were no friends of the Second Amendment. We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats at the ATF to abuse their authority and interpret laws in ways Congress clearly never intended.

So this bill may be called the BUMP Act, but it is not really about bump stocks. This bill is about banning as many firearm accessories as possible, giving the ATF broad authority to ban most semiautomatic firearms. It is an unconstitutional attack on law-abiding gun owners. Under this bill, owners of any semiautomatic firearm that has been modified to make it easier to fire will be forced to register their firearms alongside actual machineguns in the ATF's National Firearm Registration and Transfer Record Database. And if they don't, they would be in violation of the law. That is really, really scary.

If this bill becomes law, it would give the Biden administration the authority to force confiscation of any common semiautomatic firearm that has been modified to make it easier to shoot.

The majority leader knows this bill will not pass. It won't pass because enough people in this building still believe in the Constitution, and the Constitution affords Americans the right to own a firearm. This vague, overreaching bill directly infringes upon that right.

For safety, we ought to better enforce existing gun laws and address mental health issues. This bill doesn't do that. In fact, it doesn't do anything to address the root causes of gun violence. We are not addressing mental health or cultural issues driving men and women to commit these horrible crimes--the failed family structures, the depression, the division and glorification of violence on social media.

If Democrats really cared about gun violence, they would be trying to build support for a bill that could actually pass. Instead, we have a show vote on a bill that uses vague language to ban as many firearms accessories as possible and limit the Second Amendment rights of disabled and elderly Americans who may need certain accessories to use a firearm safely.

We should be working on things that actually keep America safe, like the National Defense Authorization Act.

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