The Supreme Court on Friday struck down a ban on bump stocks that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire at speeds rivaling those of machine guns, striking down one of the government’s rare firearms regulations stemming from a mass shooting.
The decision was split 6-3 along ideological lines. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority when it banned the device by issuing a rule that classified bump stocks as machine guns.
“We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a shock stock is not a ‘machine gun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single action of the trigger,'” Judge Thomas wrote. His report included several diagrams of the firing mechanism and he described the inner workings of a firearm in detail to show how a shock stock works.
The Trump administration issued the ban after a gunman opened fire at a concert in Las Vegas in 2017, one of the deadliest massacres in modern American history.
The decision was a forceful rejection of one of the administration’s few steps to combat gun violence, especially as legislative efforts in Congress have stalled. It also highlighted the court’s deep divisions as the country continues to grapple with mass shootings.
The narrowly worded decision was not a challenge to the Second Amendment. Rather, it is one of several cases in this term that involve undermining the power of administrative authorities. The court has yet to issue many of these opinions, including a challenge to a landmark precedent called Chevron. However, the bump stock decision could be a signal that conservative justices are curbing the authority of administrative agencies.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Sotomayor summarized her dissent from the bench, a practice reserved for deep disagreements and the first such announcement of this term. “The majority are putting machine guns back into civilian hands,” she said.
“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “A semi-automatic rifle with a shock stock ‘automatically fires more than one shot, without manual reloading, with a single pull of the trigger.’ Since, like Congress, I call this a machine gun, I respectfully disagree.”
With the National Firearms Act of 1934, Congress banned machine guns, defined as “any weapon that fires, is designed to fire, or is capable of automatically recovering more than one shot without manual reloading by a single function of the device.” This definition was expanded under the Gun Control Act of 1968 to include parts that can be used to convert a weapon into a machine gun, a category heavily regulated by the ATF
A shock stock gives the weapon the ability to slide back and forth quickly, using the energy of the kickback felt by the shooter when the weapon is fired. The judges appeared to be divided on whether this counted as one or more pulls of the trigger.
Until the Trump administration issued its ban, bump stocks were considered legal; A previous interpretation of the law held that they increase the speed of a weapon by sliding the stock back and forth to quickly pull the trigger, rather than by “a single function of the trigger,” as is the case for a machine gun is required.
The decision sparked an immediate backlash. Democrats seized on this and blamed former President Donald J. Trump. They said both his actions and his candidates on trial were crucial factors in the outcome.
President Biden called on Congress to take action to ban the device in a statement. “Americans should not have to live in fear of this mass devastation,” he said.
The man who challenged the bump stock ban is Michael Cargill, a gun store owner in Texas who is backed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, an advocacy group with financial ties to Charles Koch, a billionaire who has long been a conservative supporter and advocates libertarian causes. The organization primarily targets what it considers to be unlawful use of administrative powers.
Mr. Cargill said he was working on his iPad in bed when he refreshed the Supreme Court’s website and saw the decision. He said he was so overwhelmed that he fell out of bed. “I was thrilled,” he said. “For the first time in my life, I was at a loss for words.”
The case is a broader victory for gun rights, he said, adding that he believes it will make it easier to challenge future attempts by the ATF to regulate firearms.
Justice Thomas said the dissenting justices ignored Congress’ definition of a machine gun.
“A bump stock does not transform a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” Judge Thomas wrote.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. largely agreed with this assessment, concluding that “there is simply no other way to read the statutory language.”
“The horrific Las Vegas shooting of 2017 did not change the statute’s text or its meaning,” Justice Alito wrote. “There is a simple remedy for the different treatment of shock stocks and machine guns. Congress can change the law.”
In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor rejected these interpretations.
“Today, the Court returns the special reserves to civilian hands,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “To accomplish this, it casts aside Congress’s definition of ‘machine gun’ and resorts to a definition that is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the statutory text and is unsupported by context or purpose.”
“This is not a serious case,” she wrote. She added that the majority opinion “looks at the internal mechanism that starts the fire, rather than the human act of the shooter’s first move,” in an interpretation that “requires six diagrams and an animation to convey the meaning of the statutory text.” to decipher”.
The device’s deadly power became surprisingly clear in October 2017.
This month, a high-stakes gambler, Stephen Paddock, 64, opened fire on a country music festival on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel, killing 60 people and wounding hundreds. In about 11 minutes, he fired more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition. In his arsenal were about a dozen AR-15-style rifles equipped with the device.
Political pressure for action immediately mounted and intensified after a mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida, prompting President Donald J. Trump, a vocal supporter of the Second Amendment, to vow to ban the device.
Justice Department officials initially said the executive branch couldn’t ban bump stocks without action from Congress before eventually changing course. According to the ban, possessing or selling bump stocks could result in prison time.
Disagreements in the lower federal courts increased the likelihood that the Supreme Court would intervene.
After a federal judge in Texas ruled against Mr. Cargill, he appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Ultimately, the entire court, one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country, split with Mr. Cargill and split along ideological lines.
“A simple reading of the statute, coupled with a close examination of the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, shows that a bump stock is exempt from the technical definition of ‘machine gun’ in the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act,” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, a Judge appointed by George W. Bush wrote.
The three dissenting justices, all appointed by Democrats, argued that the majority’s reasoning served to “legalize an instrument of mass murder.”
Adam Liptak contributed reporting.
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2024-06-14 19:24:29
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