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Comment by enragedcacti | Hacker News Reader

Government agencies exist because congress is lazy and writing good regulation on every topic under the sun is hard. Congress describes what they want to happen, get their brownie points either from constituents or from rich donors, and move on. Regulators are then left with the actual work of creating the rules and implementing the systems that carry out that will.

The amount and degree of interpretation they are allowed to do is obviously up for debate (and has been litigated thoroughly and repeatedly) but its really silly to say "just do what congress says" as if congress doesn't constantly defer its responsibility for creating regulations to the executive.

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In this case, Congress did define multiple times these terms explicitly in the 1934 National Firearms Act, the 1969 Gun Control act, the 1986 Hughes amendment, etc.

ATF's job in this case should be enforcing the existing law, not writing new law with no congressional approval and then enforcing it themselves.

I agree that congress did give them some limited power to adjust to changing times, however I believe that has been abused in recent years to enact backdoor legislation via Presidential order without going through the expected legislative channels. That power should be revoked.

I'm not really familiar with this specific case and you may very well be right that the ATF is overstepping. We already have multiple possible solutions to this problem. Statutory interpretation, congressional approval of cabinet members, or congress passing a new law that eliminates that interpretation are all solutions that are designed into our system. Elections are also a solution to this, although they're probably a bit too coarse to solve individual regulatory issues.

It is impossible to have an executive branch that doesn't interpret the law because the law is just a piece of paper. Determining what level of interpretation is okay is already a part of our system. There is no way to just revoke that power without just collapsing the government.

I think regulations should not be effective until passed into law, but the law can start when the regulation goes into effect up to two years before it is passed so long as what the law is was published then.

That is the government can create some complex regulation. If you continue to violate their regulation you will get a notice of fine, which you are then expected to put that fine into escrow, if the law is passed you owe the fine, if not you can collect it back (with interest?) in 2 years.

Congress cannot be an expert on every possible regulation that would be needed, that is a good job for hired bureaucrats. However they should be the final stamp on everything those bureaucrats propose.

This post reminds me of the difference between declarative and imperative programming.

It would be interesting to see a review and evaluation of different law and regulation making approaches with their outcomes.

Maybe a better balance would be to have Congress delegate part of the implementation of regulation, but require them to review any major changes beforehand.

Congress doesn't work that many days a year. Around 100 I think, lots of half days. They don't get to say anything is too hard until they work as much as a fast food cashier.

> They don't get to say anything is too hard until they work as much as a fast food cashier.

It actually turns out that they do get to say this

I was just teaching my 4 year old what euphemisms are last night. She had the same confusion.

just having a bit of fun. I completely agree with your comment as a statement of how things should be. My point is that we already can't force congress to do broadly popular things, let alone boring, controversial, difficult, politically fraught things. As a fan of having a functioning government, I think trying to force 535 selfish, rich, politically motivated lawyers to research, write, and vote on hundreds of thousands of pages of passable regulations is a nonstarter.

That's fine but I'm not going to hear calls of "our democracy" if the idea is a unelected permanent government is really in charge beacuse congress refuses to work more than 2 days a week.

> Congress doesn't work that many days a year. Around 100 I think, lots of half days.

You want elected leaders who are given zero days to spend time with their constituents?

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