Right... I get we are splitting hairs. The fact is that you are still criminalizing something that was legal.
Yes, that's how laws work. Name a law that
doesn’t do that. Before the laws against murder and extortion and selling pot and driving on the left side of the road and slavery, they were all legal too.
I'll make sure not to call it ex post facto though. Is it really 'takings' if they can jail you for a felony?
Yes.
The jail isn't the taking, the taking is "you can't have this thing anymore and we're not going to compensate you".
The jail is for continuing to have an illegal thing after it became illegal. Like booze during prohibition, or texting while driving now.
It's not like they'll just take it and shake your hand. It feels very ex posty to me, but you guys are doing a great job rationalizing it for the government.
Tl;dr I think it's some nasty gray area that is bullshit.
No, it's not. It's very clear. Ex post facto laws are ones that criminalize an act *before* the law went into effect. An ex post facto bumpstock law would make it a crime to have ever bought or possessed a bumpstock, regardless of if you had one when the law went into effect. That's very different from banning current and future possession.
When talking about law, it's important to be precise. If you're not precise, you end up with crap laws and crap enforcement of a lot of "you know what we meant" laws.
Nobody is rationalizing anything, we're explaining legal terms.
The taking is still unconstitutional, and it's still a stupid law. But it's not an ex post facto one.