One item in the recently enacted Farm Bill is the legalization of hemp farming. The law incorporates Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (KY-R) Hemp Farming Act of 2018, which took hemp off of the Controlled Substances Act. It’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s job to put the farm bill into action. (In general, the law deals with programs that include rural development, conservation, and nutrition as well as farming.) Also, it enables hemp producers to obtain Federal crop insurance. (McConnell signed the Farm Bill Conference Report with a pen made from hemp.) In a December 2018 speech, McConnell stated: “Last…

The Trump Administration has proposed a new rule that would ban bump stocks, devices that are used to make semiautomatic guns operate like machine guns. The shooter in the Las Vegas shooting used a bump stock. Bump stocks are banned in some States, including Delaware, Hawaii, and Florida. In December of 2018, the Department of Justice wrote that it was “… amending the regulations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to clarify that bump-stock-type devices—meaning “bump fire” stocks, slide-fire devices, and devices with certain similar characteristics—are “machineguns” as defined by the National Firearms Act of 1934…