US Supreme Court Deems Bump Stock Ban Illegal

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a challenge to a federal ban on “bump stock” devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns. This ruling is a setback to another firearms restriction put into place under former President Donald Trump. The justices voted 6-3 to uphold a lower court’s decision in favor of Michael Cargill, a gun shop owner from Texas, who claimed that a federal agency wrongly interpreted a law banning machine guns to include bump stocks.

The ban on bump stocks was implemented after they were used in a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead. The Supreme Court’s decision affirmed that bump stocks do not convert semiautomatic rifles into machine guns.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the decision that a bump stock does not make a semiautomatic rifle a machine gun. The ruling affirms Cargill’s victory in his lawsuit, but the ban was not blocked nationwide by a lower court.

Federal officials argued that the ban was necessary to protect public safety in a country facing ongoing gun violence. Bump stocks use a rifle’s recoil to achieve rapid fire by allowing the gun to slide back and forth against the trigger finger.

In a dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed with the decision, stating that bump stocks should be considered machine guns based on Congress’s definition. She expressed concern over returning bump stocks to civilian hands.

The Supreme Court’s decision is part of its broader view on gun rights, with a 6-3 conservative majority. The case did not directly involve the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The ruling on bump stocks comes alongside other recent decisions on gun regulations.

Cargill, the plaintiff, sued to challenge the bump stocks rule after being required to surrender his own bump stocks. The case focused on technical aspects of bump stocks and the interpretation of the National Firearms Act by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The United States remains divided on how to address gun violence, with differing views on gun restrictions between Democrats and Republicans. President Biden has called gun violence a “national embarrassment,” advocating for tougher gun laws. However, in this case, it was a Republican administration that enforced the regulation on bump stocks.

The Supreme Court is also expected to rule on another gun rights case by the end of June, involving the legality of people under domestic violence restraining orders having guns.