The Supreme Court repeals the ban on the use of weapon reinforcement stocks

Supreme Court Fridayrepealed a federal agency rule banning bump stocks, a device used in some of America’s deadliest mass killings by lone gunmen.

In a 6-3 decision handed down by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court found that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority by reclassifying the devices as “machine guns” in response to an unprecedentedly brutal mass shooting. The ruling will reopen the US market for bump stocks after a six-year ban.

Plaintiff Michael Cargill, an Austin, Texas gun store owner, did not claim that the Second Amendment protected his right to possess the stockpile. The case focused narrowly on the administrative process through which the ATF banned bump stocks, which use firearm recoil to achieve a rate of fire similar to that of an automatic weapon.

The ATF issued a rule in 2018 that reclassified bump stocks as machine guns, making them illegal for civilians to possess under federal law. The office passed this order in response to the October 1, 2017 massacre at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas, when a lone gunman fired more than 1,000 shots into a concert audience, killing 60 people and injuring another 850.

However, the Supreme Court found that the stocks did not meet the statutory definition of a “machine gun,” which requires the weapon to fire automatically “by a single trigger function.”

“A 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 an opinion peppered with illustrations documenting the operation of an AR-15 trigger.

The opinion noted that in at least 10 separate cases before the Las Vegas shooting, the ATF had held that attaching a stock to a semi-automatic weapon did not transform it into a machine gun.

Thomas also described the ATF’s position on bump stocks as “logically inconsistent” because a shooter can fire a semi-automatic weapon with just his hands, but the agency does not classify impact-fired semi-automatic firearms as machine guns.

The court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Katanji Brown Jackson – disagreed, finding that stockpiles were similar enough to machine guns to warrant ATF reclassification in 2018.

“This is not a difficult case,” Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion. “All the evidence in the text points to the same interpretation. A semi-automatic rifle equipped with a stock is a machine gun because (1) with a single press of the trigger, the shooter can (2) fire a continuous shot without any human intervention other than maintaining forward pressure.

The ruling in Garland v. Cargill deals a heavy blow to gun reformers who saw bans on bump stocks as a common-sense response to the lethal force such devices can exert in mass shootings.

“A majority of judges today sided with the gun lobby rather than protecting the safety of the American people. This is a shameful decision,” Esther Sanchez-Gomez, director of litigation at Giffords Law Center, said in an emailed statement. “Congress must take action to repair the damage and make clear that stockpiles and all automatic conversion devices are illegal under federal law.”

But Friday’s ruling also highlighted the fragility of the agency’s ban, which in many cases reformers feared would not withstand judicial scrutiny.

After the Las Vegas shooting, there was broad consensus that bump stocks, which make up a small part of the overall firearms industry, should be banned.

However, Congress did not act quickly to ban bump actions following the Las Vegas shooting. Instead, then-President Donald Trump ordered the ATF to restrict the use of the devices.

A new Supreme Court ruling makes clear that Congress would have to impose a bump stock ban to get the devices off the market.

“There is a simple way to treat rifle stocks and machine guns differently,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion. “Congress can change the law – and may have already done so if the ATF had stuck to its prior interpretation. Now that the situation is clear, Congress can act.”

Shortly after the ruling, Biden urged Congress to enact a ban, stating that “Americans should not live in fear of mass destruction.”

“We know that thoughts and prayers are not enough,” Biden’s statement said. “I am calling on Congress to ban bump stocks, pass an assault weapons ban, and take additional action to save lives – send me the bill and I will sign it immediately.”

Time will tell whether such a solution will be able to overcome the GOP’s historic opposition to gun reform in Congress, especially now that the sense of urgency on the issue has waned in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting.

Reporters asked Republican Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), one of Trump’s biggest supporters in the House, if there would be an appetite for restoring Trump’s bump stock ban.

“No, I don’t think so,” Donalds said. “I think it will probably stay where it is.”

Arthur Delaney contributed reporting.