Atkins Accelator lawsuit...

The inventor of the Akins Accelerator, a device for making a semiautomatic rifle fire rapidly while maintaining a separate trigger pull for each shot, is suing the BATFE after that agency first approved his invention for sale... then later banned it.

Technically, the product should be legal. It simply mechanizes the practice of "bump firing", which uses the weapon's recoil from each shot to activate the trigger mechanism. Since the law defines an automatic weapon as one that fires more than once for a single operation of the trigger, the Accelerator should be fine. Obviously, though, it makes the BATFE nervous, and if it makes them nervous they will ban it... regardless of technicalities like what the law actually says.

It's good that the media is writing about the lawsuit, even if it's not exactly making headlines across the country. Of course, this being the media, I can't resist making a few corrections to the article:

For years, marksmen have used a technique called bump firing: shooting a semiautomatic rifle from the hip and allowing the weapon's recoil to pull the trigger.

With the assault-weapons ban keeping most fully automatic weapons out of their hands, it was one of the few ways for enthusiasts to enjoy the thrill of firing a machine gun.

As any gun enthusiast knows, the Assault Weapons Ban has nothing to do with fully-automatic weapons. That's exactly the confusion that the Violence Policy Center knowingly created and spread to encourage public support. They guessed that the public would see a weapon that looked like a fully-automatic weapon, assume it actually was such a weapon, and support banning it. Never mind the facts.

That was until the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives banned the Accelerator - two years after approving it - forcing Akins to the brink of bankruptcy.

He has filed a pair of lawsuits against the ATF - in U.S. District Court in Tampa and in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington - challenging the agency's ruling and asking to be compensated for more than $1 million in financial losses.

Good luck to Mr Akins.

And a hat tip to Alphecca for the article pointer.

Posted on 2008-06-23 02:01:47.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

Check the groups below and enter your email address to receive updates by email:

The trackback URL for this entry is: http://triggerfinger.org/weblog/servlet/trackback/7368

No trackbacks have been posted so far.

No comments have been posted so far.