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> There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything. (At

> There is a move afoot to eliminate all regulations unless they've been specifically passed by Congress. Which is basically incapable of passing anything. (At least some of) the agencies brought this on themselves with their abuse of the goodwill/benefit of the doubt previously afforded to them. Most flagrant has been the ATF, for one example constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces, turning millions of citizens into felons with no oversight beyond drawn out and expensive court cases against them. I never liked the smell of this power being afforded to agencies in the abstract, even for the "good guys" at the CDC or Department of the Interior. It's too rife for abuse. Federal regulations (whether you call it a law or a rule, the party van is coming if you break them) are supposed to be hard to pass. We once needed an amendment to ban alcohol before we forgot the definitions of interstate and commerce, but if my understanding is correct, under Chevron deference the DEA could have decided to schedule it without even asking congress.

someothherguyy 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act
LorenPechtel 2y ago
Machine guns? The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it. That being said, bump stocks are a simple enough concept that banning them is stupid. We should quite our obsession over machine guns--there are few situations where it even matters. The problem with it going through congress is that it will always be political rather than scientific. The agencies don't do a good job, but a lot of that is because of garbage they are saddled with by congress (think of the machine guns--the basic problem is that the legal and practical definitions are out of sync) and a lot of it is because politics manages to get in anyway. How about a middle ground: agencies can make rules but they must give their reasoning and supporting evidence--and anyone can challenge such in court. You can't go after the ruling but if you can knock out it's supports it goes away. This would cut both ways--exempt something from a more general ruling and the reason for the exemption can be challenged. (And I'd like to see the same thing for laws.)
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  > The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it. The part where it breaks down is pointing at a specific piece that enables automatic fire and calling that piece a "machine gun", even if it's just a tiny piece of metal or a specially-tied shoelace.
  - AceyMan 2y ago
    If it carries the "machine gun" ability with it, it's like ... The Enchanted Seer of Automatic Firing. It turns a 'plain gun' into a machine gun, and there are almost no other ways to do that. So it seems like calling it "a machine gun" is reasonable from linguistic perspective. #wittgenstein
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      I don't think the "almost no other ways to do that" part holds up.
      - lostlogin 2y ago
        Yes, other countries manage. Restricting gun ownership rather than machine gun ownership is one approach.
    - LorenPechtel 2y ago
      No. The seers have been banned. I don't think anyone thinks they're not machine gun parts. What's been going on is the ATF has been going after a variety of methods of circumventing the concept--means of using the recoil to "pull" the trigger without the operator actually pulling it. The result sure acts like a machine gun, albeit an unreliable and inaccurate one. The problem is that it's simply too easy to do, they are fighting a hopeless battle. My understanding is the same problem applies to silencers--plenty of filters out there that just happen to be of the right size to function as silencers. And there isn't even any reason for the rules against silencers. They aren't like Hollywood, it's still loud but below the threshold of hearing damage.
maximusdrex 2y ago
Your understanding is not correct. Chevron deference never meant agencies can just make up and pass law; it was a legal doctrine which merely stated that in places where the law is ambiguous (say a law declares water must be clean of pollutants, or bans pistol braces) that courts should look at any guidance from relevant agencies for guidance, since supposedly they should know more about the subject than the courts. It never allowed agencies to circumvent congress or prevented congress from further clarifying law. For example, the DEA doesn’t have the power to schedule drugs due to chevron, Congress includes provisions for the AG to reschedule drugs, which the AG historically has delegated to the DEA, the point being this was a power explicitly granted by congress. While it may sound nice to you right now that the Supreme Court did away with chevron due to your gripes with the ATF, now the definitions of machine guns or pistols or anything else are up to the whims of any judge in any jurisdiction, which could be better or, given that judges likely have even less knowledge of the subject than the ATF, probably worse and more inconsistent.
- Ajedi32 2y ago
  > Chevron deference never meant agencies can just make up and pass law Not on it's own, no. The bigger culprit there is the erosion of the nondelegation doctrine. But Chevron aggravated the problem by allowing agencies to stretch their authority beyond what even congress intended with little possibility of legal challenge. Interpreting the law is and should be the role of the courts, not the role of the agencies that that law is supposed to be governing. It'd be like if we passed a law intended to regulate insurance companies, and the courts decided to give deference to the insurance company's interpretation of that law because "they're the experts on insurance".
  - michaelmrose 2y ago
    Is there a well functioning large country that doesn't effectively govern this way? The US isn't well functioning its just rich
    - Ajedi32 2y ago
      I think most democratic nations have a similar principle of separation of powers, so... almost all of them? The US is rich because it's well functioning.
1shooner 2y ago
This is coming into my work life with web accessibility: The DoJ published a rulemaking in April that filled the many, many gaps in the existing law that determines if the government is violating the ADA when creating websites, etc. What came before this was at least 15 years of tort action, a patchwork of civil rulings across a wide variety of jurisdictions, and generally, confusion and ambiguity. Not the stuff of efficient government. From my perspective, this rulemaking is pretty close to ideal. I did not dream of getting such a clear, detailed direction from a federal agency. I think my jaw may have literally dropped as I read through it. I think the web accessibility is an interesting example, because it's not a bloated bureaucracy harassing some fishermen, it's an agency trying to prevent the government from violating your civil rights. So, is the idea that Congress would have accomplished this instead? I just can't imagine that happening.
- naijaboiler 2y ago
  yeah because Congress now have to become experts at everything: from definition of machine guns, to ADA guidelines. Afterall, if Congress didn't specifically pass the law to the detail, it doesn't exist. The sheer stupidity of that argument is mind-blowing. When you have a government agency with dedicated technical resources, but you will rather a bunch of couple hundred of people with different backgrounds make specific rules about everything. That's just madness
  - danaris 2y ago
    That's because it's not actually intended to make the regulations better. It's intended to make it impossible for regulatory agencies to do their jobs effectively, without outright legislating them out of existence, because the people backing it believe that without effective regulation they and their allies will be more easily able to enrich themselves at the public's expense.
    - rietta 2y ago
      It's because that is the constraints that the U.S. Constitution places on our form of Federal government. The Congress passes laws (and controls the money), the Executive implements the law, and the Courts interpret the law. My lay understanding is that Chevron shifted too much power from the Congress and the Courts to the administrative agencies in the Executive branch. It seemed like a "good idea" at the time but over time the abuses became apparent and this Supreme Court reigned it back in towards the balance of powers required by the Constitution.
intended 2y ago
There’s always one part I find worth adding about government being ripe for abuse. Everything is ripe for abuse. ———- Right now, agencies are the defensive structures. Corporations which own media or parties that are effectively corporations - are the threat. One of the specific defenses that’s employed by private forces is reduction in trust of agencies. —— All systems are vulnerable. It’s a question of relative vulnerability.
- mmooss 2y ago
  It's also about dividing power and checks and balances, and the legitimacy of democratic government.
rietta 2y ago
"constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces" Pistol braces was struck down not on second amendment grounds, but because the ATF failed to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act, specifically failing the logical outgrowth test. They proffered a comment period and then did a switch when publishing the final rule. Similar shenanigans were afoot with the Trump area bump stock ban, which was ruled against by the Supreme Court itself in Garland v. Cargill. I think that had to do with the agency exceeding its authority beyond what the statute specifically specifies. In laymans terms, the legal details were not ambiguous enough to justify the conclusion that the agency came to stretching the statute through their interpretation.

someothherguyy 2y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act

LorenPechtel 2y ago

Machine guns? The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it. That being said, bump stocks are a simple enough concept that banning them is stupid. We should quite our obsession over machine guns--there are few situations where it even matters. The problem with it going through congress is that it will always be political rather than scientific. The agencies don't do a good job, but a lot of that is because of garbage they are saddled with by congress (think of the machine guns--the basic problem is that the legal and practical definitions are out of sync) and a lot of it is because politics manages to get in anyway. How about a middle ground: agencies can make rules but they must give their reasoning and supporting evidence--and anyone can challenge such in court. You can't go after the ruling but if you can knock out it's supports it goes away. This would cut both ways--exempt something from a more general ruling and the reason for the exemption can be challenged. (And I'd like to see the same thing for laws.)

Dylan16807 2y ago
> The ATF is simply going on function rather than form. It shoots like a machine gun it is a machine gun no matter what you call it. The part where it breaks down is pointing at a specific piece that enables automatic fire and calling that piece a "machine gun", even if it's just a tiny piece of metal or a specially-tied shoelace.
- AceyMan 2y ago
  If it carries the "machine gun" ability with it, it's like ... The Enchanted Seer of Automatic Firing. It turns a 'plain gun' into a machine gun, and there are almost no other ways to do that. So it seems like calling it "a machine gun" is reasonable from linguistic perspective. #wittgenstein
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    I don't think the "almost no other ways to do that" part holds up.
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      Yes, other countries manage. Restricting gun ownership rather than machine gun ownership is one approach.
  - LorenPechtel 2y ago
    No. The seers have been banned. I don't think anyone thinks they're not machine gun parts. What's been going on is the ATF has been going after a variety of methods of circumventing the concept--means of using the recoil to "pull" the trigger without the operator actually pulling it. The result sure acts like a machine gun, albeit an unreliable and inaccurate one. The problem is that it's simply too easy to do, they are fighting a hopeless battle. My understanding is the same problem applies to silencers--plenty of filters out there that just happen to be of the right size to function as silencers. And there isn't even any reason for the rules against silencers. They aren't like Hollywood, it's still loud but below the threshold of hearing damage.

maximusdrex 2y ago

Your understanding is not correct. Chevron deference never meant agencies can just make up and pass law; it was a legal doctrine which merely stated that in places where the law is ambiguous (say a law declares water must be clean of pollutants, or bans pistol braces) that courts should look at any guidance from relevant agencies for guidance, since supposedly they should know more about the subject than the courts. It never allowed agencies to circumvent congress or prevented congress from further clarifying law. For example, the DEA doesn’t have the power to schedule drugs due to chevron, Congress includes provisions for the AG to reschedule drugs, which the AG historically has delegated to the DEA, the point being this was a power explicitly granted by congress. While it may sound nice to you right now that the Supreme Court did away with chevron due to your gripes with the ATF, now the definitions of machine guns or pistols or anything else are up to the whims of any judge in any jurisdiction, which could be better or, given that judges likely have even less knowledge of the subject than the ATF, probably worse and more inconsistent.

Ajedi32 2y ago
> Chevron deference never meant agencies can just make up and pass law Not on it's own, no. The bigger culprit there is the erosion of the nondelegation doctrine. But Chevron aggravated the problem by allowing agencies to stretch their authority beyond what even congress intended with little possibility of legal challenge. Interpreting the law is and should be the role of the courts, not the role of the agencies that that law is supposed to be governing. It'd be like if we passed a law intended to regulate insurance companies, and the courts decided to give deference to the insurance company's interpretation of that law because "they're the experts on insurance".
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  Is there a well functioning large country that doesn't effectively govern this way? The US isn't well functioning its just rich
  - Ajedi32 2y ago
    I think most democratic nations have a similar principle of separation of powers, so... almost all of them? The US is rich because it's well functioning.

1shooner 2y ago

This is coming into my work life with web accessibility: The DoJ published a rulemaking in April that filled the many, many gaps in the existing law that determines if the government is violating the ADA when creating websites, etc. What came before this was at least 15 years of tort action, a patchwork of civil rulings across a wide variety of jurisdictions, and generally, confusion and ambiguity. Not the stuff of efficient government. From my perspective, this rulemaking is pretty close to ideal. I did not dream of getting such a clear, detailed direction from a federal agency. I think my jaw may have literally dropped as I read through it. I think the web accessibility is an interesting example, because it's not a bloated bureaucracy harassing some fishermen, it's an agency trying to prevent the government from violating your civil rights. So, is the idea that Congress would have accomplished this instead? I just can't imagine that happening.

naijaboiler 2y ago
yeah because Congress now have to become experts at everything: from definition of machine guns, to ADA guidelines. Afterall, if Congress didn't specifically pass the law to the detail, it doesn't exist. The sheer stupidity of that argument is mind-blowing. When you have a government agency with dedicated technical resources, but you will rather a bunch of couple hundred of people with different backgrounds make specific rules about everything. That's just madness
- danaris 2y ago
  That's because it's not actually intended to make the regulations better. It's intended to make it impossible for regulatory agencies to do their jobs effectively, without outright legislating them out of existence, because the people backing it believe that without effective regulation they and their allies will be more easily able to enrich themselves at the public's expense.
  - rietta 2y ago
    It's because that is the constraints that the U.S. Constitution places on our form of Federal government. The Congress passes laws (and controls the money), the Executive implements the law, and the Courts interpret the law. My lay understanding is that Chevron shifted too much power from the Congress and the Courts to the administrative agencies in the Executive branch. It seemed like a "good idea" at the time but over time the abuses became apparent and this Supreme Court reigned it back in towards the balance of powers required by the Constitution.

intended 2y ago

There’s always one part I find worth adding about government being ripe for abuse. Everything is ripe for abuse. ———- Right now, agencies are the defensive structures. Corporations which own media or parties that are effectively corporations - are the threat. One of the specific defenses that’s employed by private forces is reduction in trust of agencies. —— All systems are vulnerable. It’s a question of relative vulnerability.

mmooss 2y ago
It's also about dividing power and checks and balances, and the legitimacy of democratic government.

rietta 2y ago

"constantly redefining machine guns or pistol braces" Pistol braces was struck down not on second amendment grounds, but because the ATF failed to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act, specifically failing the logical outgrowth test. They proffered a comment period and then did a switch when publishing the final rule. Similar shenanigans were afoot with the Trump area bump stock ban, which was ruled against by the Supreme Court itself in Garland v. Cargill. I think that had to do with the agency exceeding its authority beyond what the statute specifically specifies. In laymans terms, the legal details were not ambiguous enough to justify the conclusion that the agency came to stretching the statute through their interpretation.