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Utah gun lobbyist will have to give up his bump stock after all

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah gun rights advocate Clark Aposhian, one of only a handful of Americans who are legally allowed to keep their bump stock, a shooting accessory that alters semi-automatic rifles to fire in quick bursts like a machine gun, demonstrates how it works on an AKM-47 at a gun range in Murray, UT, on Thursday, April 4, 2019. He is challenging the bump stock ban in court, and an appeals court has allowed him to keep his bump stock until his case is resolved in court.

  | May 2, 2019, 12:00 p.m.
| Updated: 4:04 p.m.

For the past few weeks, Utah gun lobbyist Clark Aposhian was the only man in America who could legally own a bump stock.

Not anymore.

Gun owners were supposed to give up or destroy the shooting accessory, which makes a semi-automatic weapon fire in quick bursts like a machine gun, after the federal government banned them. The deadline was in March.

But Aposhian filed a lawsuit challenging the bump stock ban, arguing that outlawing the shooting accessory was unconstitutional because it amounts to the executive branch rewriting laws, a job reserved for Congress.

He also asked that he be able to keep his bump stock until his lawsuit is resolved. Being forced to give it up, his attorney argued in court papers, would cause him irreparable harm if the ban is overturned and the only bump stock he owns was already destroyed.

The request was denied by a federal judge in March, but the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals granted him a temporary stay just days before the bump stocks were outlawed. He got to keep his bump stock.

That is until the same 10th Circuit reversed that decision Tuesday. After further review, the circuit judges decided that Aposhian’s request for an injunction was “not warranted.”

Aposhian said Wednesday that he has until next Monday to turn in his bump stock to federal authorities. It won't be destroyed though — Aposhian said the government will hold onto it until the lawsuit is resolved, and if he wins, he'll get it back.

He said the ruling was not entirely a surprise. But short of keeping the bump stock, Aposhian said it's being handled in the best way he could hope for.

The federal government approved bump stocks for sales in 2010 after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) determined it was not the same as a machine gun and couldn’t be regulated as if it was.

But that all changed after a gunman outfitted several of his firearms with bump stocks in October 2017 and sprayed bullets into a crowd at a county music concert in Last Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

In response, President Donald Trump said he thought the devices should be banned, and many in Congress — including members from Utah — agreed.

But Congress didn't act. In December, the ATF did, reclassifying bump stocks as machine guns. Anyone who is still in possession of one is committing a felony.

Aposhian said he filed the lawsuit not because he likes bumps stocks — he's called it one of the "lamest" shooting accessories he owns — but because he doesn't agree with the way the ban was put into place.

He said he worries that if the bump stock ban remains, any future president could ban anything they disagree with.

“Today it’s bump stocks,” he said, “and it affects firearm owners. Tomorrow it may be something completely different that will affect other folks.”

So, will he take out the bump stock one last time before turning it in? Aposhian said he’s not sure. He might give it one more go.

But since the exception that let him keep his bump stock only applies to him, Aposhian hasn’t been able to let anyone else use it — which he said takes the fun out of recreational shooting.

“It’s kind of sad and depressing to shoot it by yourself,” he said. “And others can be there, but there’s really not a whole lot of joy in saying, ‘Hey, watch me shoot this.’”