Supreme Court Removes Trump-Era Bump Stock Ban
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
The Supreme Court overturned a Donald Trump-era federal rule that outlawed bump stocks and other devices that increased the rate of fire for semiautomatic guns.
On Friday, the court ruled via a 6-3 decision that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its power by issuing a ban in 2018 on bump stock devices. The ban was enacted following the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at a music festival in Las Vegas.
Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the majority opinion, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor gave the dissenting opinion. The court remained split along ideological lines for the decision.
“This case asks whether a bump stock — an accessory for a semiautomatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire) — converts the rifle into a ‘machinegun.’ We hold that it does not,” Thomas wrote in his majority opinion.
The December 2018 rule specifically banned a rifle from being equipped with a bump stock because it would qualify as a machine gun due to the increase in the firing rate. The rule required that those who owned bump stocks already had to destroy or surrender their devices by March 2018 or face criminal penalties.
The action by the federal government remains one of the most significant new federal regulations to combat gun violence in recent decades. At the time, Republicans in Congress opposed the ban and were critical of the Trump administration’s decision.
Bump stocks are classified as attachments to a firearm that increase the rate of fire for semiautomatic rifles to hundreds of rounds per minute. The center argument in the case, Garland v. Cargill, revolved around the issue of the ATF being incorrect in determining that a rifle enhanced by a bump stock could be classified as a machine gun, which is banned under federal law.
According to CBS News, the ATF rule originally found that an enhanced rifle could be considered “automatic” because “the device harnesses the firearm’s recoil energy as part of a continuous back-and-forth cycle that allows the shooter to attain continuous firing after a single pull of the trigger.”
President Joe Biden’s administration had asked the Supreme Court not to change the ATF’s bump stock policy.
