WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down a rule passed after the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that defined a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock attachment as a machine gun, which is generally prohibited under federal law.
The opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, limits the executive branch’s already restricted ability to address gun violence. Thomas, a staunch advocate of Second Amendment gun rights, wrote that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its statutory authority by banning the sale and possession of bump stocks, which he said were fundamentally different from machine guns.
“Nothing changes when a semi-automatic rifle is equipped with a bump stock,” Thomas wrote. “Between each shot, the shooter must release pressure from the trigger and allow it to reset before pulling the trigger again for another shot.”
The case, Garland v. Cargillwas a 6-3 decision that broke with the court’s established ideological lines.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the most senior member of the court’s liberal wing, wrote the dissent, arguing that the decision would “put bump stocks back in the hands of civilians.”
“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 wrote. “A semi-automatic rifle with a bump stock ‘automatically fires more than one round, without the need for manual reloading, with a single pull of the trigger.’ Since I, like Congress, call that a machine gun, I respectfully dissent.”
Setback in gun safety
The White House sharply criticized the decision.
“Today’s decision repeals an important gun safety rule,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “Americans should not have to live in fear of this mass devastation.”
Biden has called on Congress to ban bump stocks and assault rifles, but any gun-related legislation is likely to stall because Republicans control the House of Representatives and Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate.
“Bump stocks have played a devastating role in many of our country’s horrific mass shootings, but unfortunately it is no surprise that the Supreme Court is rolling back this necessary public safety rule to advance its out-of-touch, extreme agenda,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
Rule of the Trump era
This case stems from a rule passed during the Trump administration. after the mass shooting in Las Vegas. A gunman fired into a crowd at a music festival with rifles equipped with a bump stock. That evening, he killed 58 people, two others later succumbed to their injuries, and over 500 were injured.
The following year, the ATF issued a regulation declaring bump stocks to be illegal machine guns, and anyone in possession of a bump stock had to either destroy the material or turn it over to the agency to avoid criminal prosecution.
Michael Cargill, a gun shop owner from Austin, Texas, turned over two bump stocks to the ATF and subsequently challenged the rule in federal court.
A U.S. district court dismissed his lawsuit, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed with Cargill, holding that the definition of a machine gun in a 1986 law did not apply to bump stocks because the guns equipped with those attachments do not fire multiple bullets “automatically” or “by a single function of the trigger.”
This law defines a machine gun as follows: “Any weapon that fires more than one shot automatically and without manual reloading by a single pull of the trigger, is designed to fire, or can be easily made to fire again.”
The Biden administration appealed the 5th Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court arguments
In oral arguments, the Biden administration defended the Trump-era rule, saying bump stocks allowed semi-automatic rifles to fire automatically with a single pull of the trigger.
Cargill’s lawyers argued that bump stocks were used by repeatedly pulling the trigger rather than automatically firing with a single pull.
In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor said the decision would “limit the federal government’s efforts to keep shooters like the Las Vegas shooter away from machine guns.”
Thomas also wrote a huge weapon Decision in 2022, which invalidated a New York law against carrying a firearm in public without proving a special need for protection. The court decided the case based on the 14th Amendment, but also expanded 2nd Amendment rights.
As a result of this 2022 decision, another case related to weapons in court A federal law banning the possession of firearms by people with domestic violence protection orders is being considered this session, and a decision is expected later this month.
