The Supreme Court on Friday struck down the federal ban on bump stocks.
In December 2018, the Trump administration banned bump stocks. According to ATF regulations The device was declared a “machine gun” and Bump stocks are illegal under federal law. Case, Garland v. CargillThe case initially came to the Supreme Court after a U.S. district court ruled in favor of the government, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.
“If I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”
The central issue in this case is whether bump stock devices meet the definition of a “machine gun.”
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Domination The ATF argued that it exceeded its statutory authority because bump stock devices do not meet the statutory definition of a “machine gun as defined in the United States Code.” 26 U.S.C. §5845(b)“
Justice Clarence Thomas Wrote the majority opinion.
Using the legal definition of a machine gun — “a firearm that can automatically fire multiple rounds with a single pull of the trigger” — Thomas explained why bump stocks do not meet the definition.
He wrote:
A semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock never fires more than one shot per “single function of the trigger.” With or without a bump stock, the shooter must release and reset the trigger between shots, and any subsequent shots fired after the trigger is released and reset are the result of separate and distinct “functions of the trigger.” All a bump stock does is accelerate the rate of fire by causing these distinct “functions.”[s]Trigger ” ” occurs one after another.
This is the key difference between fully automatic and semi-automatic guns.
A fully automatic gun fires all available ammunition with a single pull of the trigger, while a semi-automatic gun fires only one shot per pull of the trigger. Bump stocks increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic gun by using the gun’s recoil to quickly “push” the trigger against your finger, but they don’t change the fundamental way the gun works – one bullet is fired per pull of the trigger.
Importantly, Thomas wrote, even if a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock fires on a single function of the trigger, it does not fire “automatically.”
“[A] “Semi-automatic rifles cannot fire more than one round with a ‘single pull of the trigger’ because the shooter must do more than simply pull the trigger. The same is true for semi-automatic rifles equipped with bump stocks,” Thomas wrote.
Thomas also noted that the ATF had previously argued “more than a dozen times across multiple administrations” that bump stocks do not meet the statutory definition of a “machine gun,” but changed its position on bump stocks after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by the Court’s two other left-leaning justices, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Despite the majority’s technical and mechanical explanation for why bump stocks do not meet the statutory definition of a “machine gun,” Sotomayor dissented by making a key accusation.
“Today the court put bump stocks back into civilian hands,” she argued.
“If I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she added.
But unlike the majority, Justice Sotomayor sought to redefine the law by eschewing the technical mechanics of the firearm, even writing at one point that “regardless of what is going on in the internal mechanism of the firearm.” She argued that the “single action of the trigger” actually means “the single action by which the shooter initiates a series of shots.”
Sotomayor also stoked fears that the ruling would have “deadly consequences” and lamented that it would be a “horrible drag” on the government.
But the lone concurring opinion in the case, by Justice Samuel Alito, proves that this is not the case.
Alito said there’s a “simple solution” to ban bump stocks.
“There is a simple solution to the difference in treatment of bump stocks and machine guns: Congress can change the law. If the ATF had stuck to its previous interpretation, it probably would have done so already,” Alito wrote.
“Now that the situation is clear, Congress can act,” he added.
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