Hold up: Parent-poster is obviously talking about federal regulations, not federal laws, and there are important differences between them... so why have you altered the quote to say [Laws]?

That's false. You've put your own words into their mouth to create a "sounds like China" strawman.

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mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The regulations are [often] binding as law. When they change the regulations they are changing the law, under the fiction they're merely changing the interpretation of the law.

An example that comes to mind is the prosecution of Tate Adamiak. One of his machine gun charges was for having an improperly demilled machine gun parts. The parts were demilled under pre-2001 import standards, and the parts were imported pre-2001, and legally imported and sold through a licensed FFL on gun broker. Magically at some point the rule changed and the letter of law never did, and magically the parts weren't parts but actually a machine gun... this bound as law. I think he'll be released in about 15 years.

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Ajedi32 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ah yes I forgot, they're not "laws" just "rules" that the government will come after you if you break. Silly me.

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> they're not "laws" just "rules" that the government will come after you if you break

If you break a rule you get fined. If you break a law you can go to jail. (Congress can delegate regulation around crimes to an agency, but the crime generally has to be substantially described by statute.)

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cucumber3732842 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

>If you break a rule you get fined. If you break a law you can go to jail

That's a distinction without a difference when talking about the kinds of ruinous fines government agencies levy and how equivalently ruinous lawyering up to fight them is.

Most people receiving these fines happily spend a month in prison for six figures because six figures is years of discretionary income to most people.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> That's a distinction without a difference Criminal versus civil is a distinction with massive difference. > Most people receiving these fines happily spend a month in prison for six figures Most civil monetary penalties are for reporting and filing violations to the FEC, HHS or FinCEN; submitting false information in a Medicare/Medicaid claim [1], grant, contract or bid; or violating consumer protection, employer, OSHA, environmental or patient care laws. The “you” is probably a corporation. And I’m not sure anyone would rationally escalate a fine for e.g. submitting a contract bid with outdated information into a criminal conviction. [1] https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/enforcement/types-of-civil-monetar...:

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mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not. It's literally the same damn thing but with a different sized cartridge. Nothing in the statute would allow this, yet executive 'delegation' mumbo-jumbo and magically one is basically unregulated and the other is felonies out the ass if you start commercially selling them without a host of licensing and checks.

The truth is the rulemaking and delegation stuff has strayed so far from the legal fiction as to be almost completely unrecognizable from the thin veil authorizing it.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not Have you petitioned to have the rule revisited? I’d imagine this is the right political climate in which to do it. We have an overreaching regulatory state. I agree with you on that. But trying to ram everything through the Congress just means we get a President who is a king, because the complexity of administering a large, modern economy is simply not one that can be centrally deliberated in the way legislative bodies work.