The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down a federal ban on “bulk” weapons devices | US Supreme Court

Conservative bloc

• Alito – majority

• Barrett – majority

• Gorsuch – majority

• Kavanaugh – majority

• Roberts – majority

• Tomasz – the majority

Liberal Bloc

• Jackson – Minority

• Kagan – minority

• Sotomayor – Minority

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down a federal ban on “stock stocks,” devices that can enhance semi-automatic firearms to fire ammunition almost as fast as machine guns and that have sparked some of the most devastating mass shootings in recent history.

The ruling was 6 to 3, with the Court’s liberal justices disagreeing with the decision of the conservative majority. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said a semi-automatic weapon equipped with a stock did not meet the definition of a machine gun, which is subject to stricter regulations.

Joe Biden condemned the ruling and called on Congress to take more action on gun safety, renewing his demand for a federal ban on assault weapons.

“Today’s decision repeals an important gun safety regulation. Americans should not live in fear of this massive devastation,” Biden said. “We know that thoughts and prayers are not enough. I am calling on Congress to ban bump stocks, pass an assault weapons ban, and take additional action to save lives – send me your bill and I will sign it immediately.”

The high court’s ruling in Garland v. Cargill invalidates a 2018 Trump administration order issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that ordered anyone with stockpiles to destroy them or turn them over to federal agents. The law was passed after the devastating mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival in 2017, in which a gunman fired more than 1,000 rounds, killing 60 people and injuring nearly 500.

After the ban was implemented, Michael Cargill, a U.S. Army veteran who owned a gun store in Austin, Texas, gave away the few supplies he had. He then appealed against this regulation to the Supreme Court.

In his concurring opinion, conservative Justice Samuel Alito argued that the Las Vegas shooting “did not change the text of the statute or its meaning,” suggesting that the onus was on Congress to address the legality of wrestling.

“This event demonstrated that a stock semi-automatic rifle could have the same lethal effect as a machine gun, strengthening the case for the need to amend the (Machine Gun Act),” Alito wrote. “However, an event that highlights the need to change the law does not in itself change its meaning.”

The National Gun Rights Association welcomed the decision and called on the Supreme Court to issue similar rulings in cases involving ghost guns and braces.

“ATF has been out of its lane for so long that it can’t even find its way anymore,” said Dudley Brown, the association’s president. “The ATF has gone rogue by taking over law-making authority that it does not have regarding rules regarding handgun cameras, homemade firearms, what a gun dealer is, etc., and they must be stopped.”

But in her scathing dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused her conservative colleagues of ignoring wrestling’s ability to transform semi-automatic firearms into much more powerful and deadly weapons.

“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,” Sotomayor wrote. “A stock-equipped semi-automatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single trigger function’… Since I, like Congress, call it a machine gun, I respectfully oppose it.”

She expressed concern that the ruling would only contribute to more mass shootings, writing: “The majority’s artificially narrow definition hampers government efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.”

The repeal of the ban dismayed gun safety groups such as Sandy Hook Promise, which warns that bump stocks make the gun even deadlier because it allows multiple shots per second to be fired with a single pull of the trigger. The public reaction was so strong after the Las Vegas crash that even the National Rifle Association, an organization known for its opposition to gun regulations, joined the call to remove the attachments from circulation.

“Weapons equipped with stock guns shoot like machine guns, kill like machine guns, and should be banned like machine guns, but the Supreme Court has just decided to put these deadly devices back on the market,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “We call on Congress to correct this mistake and pass bipartisan legislation to ban stockpiles, which are paraphernalia of war that have no place in our communities.”

However, in a House controlled by Republicans, the passage of a bill banning bump actions seems unlikely at this point.