What a stockpiling ban could mean for guns in the US

The U.S. Supreme Court today struck down a federal ban on bump stocks, devices that can be attached to a semi-automatic rifle to fire at the speed of a machine gun – potentially hundreds of rounds per minute.

Since the 1930s, most people have effectively been banned from owning machine guns, but there have been questions about whether the ban applies to accessories that make legal weapons fire as fast as a machine gun. This is determined by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and for years the agency has considered whether to ban bump stocks. But in 2017, a man using gun stocks committed the deadliest gun massacre in modern American history, killing 60 people and injuring hundreds at a Las Vegas concert. After this mass shooting, many warehouse owners saw a ban coming. The Trump administration did decide to ban bump stocks, a restriction that went into effect in 2019.

What was the court’s reason for lifting this ban?

It all comes down to the legal definition of a machine gun, which is that it is a weapon that fires multiple rounds with a “single trigger function.” The word “function” is key here because it is not the same as pressing the trigger.

With the stock, you press the trigger once, hold it down, rest the stock against your shoulder, while the recoil moves the trigger very quickly, firing those rounds at machine gun speed; one pull but multiple trigger functions.

Today, the court found that this was a big enough difference that the ATF wrongly called the stock a “machine gun” under the law.

This seems to be a very technical distinction. Could this mean allowing other types of weapon attachments?

Probably not directly, because it is so narrowly focused on the mechanics of stocks that it would not apply, for example, to Glock switches, i.e. another type of illegal device that, according to Adam, allows you to shoot a gun like an automatic Skaggs, general counsel at Giffords Law, gun safety group. However, he is concerned about the broader approach of the Supreme Court on this issue.

“But I think the fact that there are six justices who are willing to blithely throw out an extremely important ATF public safety regulation suggests that they may view other ATF regulations with skepticism,” he says.

What about gun rights lawyers? Do they think this ruling will impact other firearms restrictions?

Attorney Matt Larosiere, who helped launch a similar challenge to the stock ban, agrees that it should not affect the ban on Glock switches or automatic sears, but believes it could impact other ATF regulations, such as the ban selling guns without serial numbers, known as “ghost guns”.

“This case is not so much about the definition of machine guns, but about how far from the boundaries that the Supreme Court is willing to allow regulatory agencies to draw the lines. I think this case says “not very far.”

What about states that already have bump stock bans in place?

At least 15 states and the District of Columbia prohibit bump stocks. This is not a ruling based on the Second Amendment, so it does not invalidate state bans. The Supreme Court says Congress, if it chooses, can always pass a law changing the definition of machine guns to include bump stocks.