For a time, forced-reset triggers were treated like machine guns. You just couldn't have them, and Rare Breed Triggers had to go to the mats to change that. They succeeded — we won't get into how they've handled potential competition here, for the record. It's not relevant.
Now, they're legal, and that means you can buy one and install it into your gun.
Or can you?
That's an important question, and one that failure to know the answer to resulted in a Texas man's arrest in the state of Florida.
Skyeler “Bleau” Jackson, 24, says he is the first person ever charged with an eight-year-old Florida statute that may prohibit the possession of Forced Reset Triggers, or FRTs, which are completely legal in most other free states.
He may be right.
FRTs have long been a frequent target of the anti-gun media, which falsely claimed they turned rifles into machineguns. Thankfully, federal law now makes them legal, but a Florida state law still bans FRTs in the Sunshine State.
Florida’s poorly written statute certainly hasn’t been used much since 2018 when then-Governor Rick Scott—now a U.S. Senator—signed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which created the law.
FRTs aren’t even mentioned in the statute, which bans “bump-fire stocks” as well as anything else that can “alter the rate of fire of a firearm to mimic automatic weapon fire or which is used to increase the rate of fire to a faster rate than is possible for a person to fire such semiautomatic firearm unassisted by a kit, a tool, an accessory, or a device.”
Whether FRTs are even illegal in Florida is a judgement call, which in Jackson’s case was made by investigators working for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
Gun rights advocates have been trying to get lawmakers to scuttle the post-Parkland measures for the last few years, focusing primarily on the age limit for buying a long gun. They weren't happy about any of it, but the age limit was the least tolerable.
The lawmakers who voted for these abominations have held firm since then, refusing to even let these measures come up for a vote in most cases, all because they don't want to have to decide between voting anti-gun and potentially destroying their political career this time around, or admitting they were wrong...and potentially destroying their political career this time around.
Frankly, I'd rather someone admit they're wrong than keep knowingly making the same mistake, but this is politics. What do you expect?
Jackson currently faces up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, all for selling something that's legal in almost every other state except for the most anti-gun ones. Florida, the so-called Gunshine State, is nothing of the sort. He shouldn't be facing prosecution for this because it shouldn't be illegal. More than that, we also have to recognize that with the myriad of state laws on the books, it's hard for even lifelong residents to know the totality of what's permissible and what isn't. Someone coming in from another state is unlikely to recognize that.
Still, if you're someone who sells gun parts, make damn sure you know what you're selling and where you can sell it. No one wants to look at losing their gun rights and their freedom like this.