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Supreme Court rejects ATF ban on bump stocks

By a vote of 6 to 3, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned a ban on “bump stocks.” These attachments give a semi-automatic weapon more power than an automatic weapon, but have a key difference that the court majority pointed out in its ruling.

The bump stock ban was implemented by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2018 during the Trump administration after a mass shooting occurred at a music festival in Las Vegas where the weapon used was equipped with a bump stock attachment. 60 people died and over 500 were injured, leading the AT to decide that the weapon was converted to a machine gun, the civilian use of which was banned by Congress.

The ruling, written by Judge Clarence Thomas, said the ATF made a definitional error when it decided that a federal ban on machine guns would include bump stocks.

The plaintiffs' argument was not a constitutional dispute based on the Second Amendment right to bear arms, but rather on an ATF misunderstanding of how firearms work.

According to the law, a machine gun is any weapon that can fire more than one shot automatically and “by a single pull of the trigger”.

Judge Thomas wrote that semi-automatic rifles with bump stocks do not fire more than one shot “by a single pull of the trigger.” Instead, the shooter must release the trigger and “allow it to reset before pulling the trigger again or firing another shot.”

The bump stock reduces the time required by allowing a quick trigger reset, and even if a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock fires more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger, it does not do so automatically, as the law clearly states. A shooter who wishes to fire multiple shots with a semi-automatic rifle with a bump stock “must also actively apply just the right amount of forward pressure to the front grip of the rifle with his trigger hand,” Thomas wrote.

Justice Samuel Alito echoed that sentiment in a written opinion, saying that while the court could understand the intent, it had to follow the automatic weapons law enacted by Congress. If Congress wanted to change the law, it had to revise the law.

“The final rule clarifies that the definition of 'machine gun' in the Gun Control Act (GCA) and the National Firearms Act (NFA) includes 'bump-stock' type devices, which are devices that enable a semiautomatic firearm to fire more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger by harnessing the recoil energy of the semiautomatic firearm to which it is attached, causing the trigger to reset and continue firing without the shooter having to additionally physically pull the trigger,” the statement on the ATFf website said.

Owners of bump stocks were required to surrender or destroy them.

“Current owners of bump-stock type devices will be required to dispose of their possessions upon the effective date of the final rule (March 26, 2019),” the ATF wrote. “One option is to destroy the device, and the final rule identifies possible methods of destruction, including completely melting, shredding, or crushing the device. Any method of destruction must result in the device not being readily operable again.”

All gun owners who ultimately had to surrender or destroy their weapons suffered financial damage as a result of the regulation now overturned by the Supreme Court.

Read the ATF rule at this link.

Dissenting were the court's three liberal justices: Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote the dissenting opinion warning of “deadly consequences.”

Anna Harden

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