The Supreme Court overturned the Trump-era ban on gun stocks

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Friday that devices that turn a semi-automatic rifle into something resembling a machine gun are legal, a victory for gun rights advocates and a blow to efforts to curb the gun violence that has plagued the nation.

The court split 6-3 on ideological grounds, finding that the federal government had wrongly classified the stock as a machine gun.

“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,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his opinion for the majority.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who read the liberal dissent from the bench, said the majority used an “artificially narrow definition” to reach a conclusion that would have “deadly consequences.”

“Quacks like a duck”

“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,” she wrote.

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The controversial devices were banned by the Trump administration after the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s history. In 2017, a gunman who used bump stocks in some of his numerous weapons fired at concertgoers in Las Vegas, killing 58 people.

But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ 2018 conclusion that the stocks met the legal definition of a machine gun was a reversal of earlier decisions.

During Supreme Court oral arguments in February, conservative justices – many of whom have long had doubts about federal agencies’ regulatory powers – were concerned about the carnage the devices could cause, but also wondered whether the Justice Department had interpreted the Firearms Act too broadly.

The hypertechnical problem they were asked to solve was whether a stock rifle fired more than one shot “automatically” and “with a single trigger function.”

The stock uses the rifle’s recoil to speed up the trigger pull, technically “hitting” the trigger with each shot after it bounces off the shooter’s shoulder. The rifle can then fire 400 to 800 shots per minute.

The judges had to decide whether this meant that the stock allowed the weapon to fire continuously when the shooter pressed the trigger, or whether the shooter would reactivate the trigger between each shot.

Most found that firing multiple shots from the stock requires more than one trigger function because the shooter most often maintains forward pressure on the foregrip of the rifle.

“Without constant manual input, a stock semi-automatic rifle will not fire many shots,” Thomas wrote.

“Blood on our streets”

Justice Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion, said there was no doubt that if Congress banned machine guns, lawmakers would see no real difference between a machine gun and a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a stock.

But that’s not how the law was written, Alito said, so the “simple remedy” is for Congress to amend it.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said Congress must act.

“This decision will bring blood to our streets,” Newsom wrote on social media. “This blood will be on the hands of every Republican in Congress who refuses to enact commonsense reforms.“

President Joe Biden on Friday called on Congress to ban bump stocks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Senate Democrats are ready for it, “but we’re going to need Republican votes in the Senate.”

The Trump campaign’s response made no mention of the role he played in banning bump stocks.

“The Court has spoken and its decision must be respected,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump has been and always will be a fierce defender of Americans’ Second Amendment rights and is proud to have the endorsement of the NRA.”

Efforts to pass regulations after the Las Vegas shooting were met with opposition from the National Rifle Association, so the Trump administration turned to administrative action, according to Adam Winkler, author of “Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America.” “

“Given the Supreme Court’s hostility to administrative agencies, the NRA correctly predicted that such agency regulations would be more susceptible to challenge,” said Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law.

The national regulator said on Friday that the court’s decision would be crucial in the fight against future ATF regulations.

“The Supreme Court has rightly limited executive branch agencies to their enforcement, not lawmaking, role,” said Randy Kozuch, executive director of the NRA’s Legislative Action Institute.

The ban was challenged by a gun shop owner

Michael Cargill, a gun store owner and gun rights advocate from Austin, Texas, sued the government over the ban. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Cargill, and the Biden administration appealed.

In its decision, the appeals court said the government was seeking to ban the use of “administrative action” backups even though the ATF had authorized the use of the devices.

Congress banned automatic weapons for private use in a 1934 law after machine guns became the weapon of choice for mobsters like Al Capone and John Dillinger.

Unlike another case before the court this year – whether domestic violence perpetrators can own guns – this one did not rely on the Second Amendment.