In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court overturned a federal bump stock ban, adding to a week of court victories on various Second Amendment issues that include individual firearm sales and pistol braces. The most important outcome of this case might be what the liberal justices acknowledged in their dissenting opinion – read on to find out.
The court’s conservative majority ruled that the federal government overstepped its authority by classifying bump stocks as machine guns. This ruling voids the Trump administration’s 2018 ban which took effect following the 2017 Las Vegas massacre.
“A bump stock does not convert a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in the majority opinion. He argued that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) had exceeded its regulatory powers.
Central to the case was the question whether a rifle equipped with a bump stock meets the federal definition of a machine gun. Under the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968, machine guns are defined as weapons that can fire more than one shot “automatically” with a single trigger function. A firearm equipped with a bump stock still requires a separate trigger action for each shot.
In reading the opinion, it’s clear that many on the court struggled to understand the basic elements of how a firearm works. The majority opinion points this out:
According to ATF, all the shooter must do is keep his trigger finger stationary on the bump stock’s ledge and maintain constant forward pressure on the front grip to continue firing. The dissent offers similar reasoning. This argument rests on the mistaken premise that there is a difference between a shooter flexing his finger to pull the trigger and a shooter pushing the firearm forward to bump the trigger against his stationary finger. ATF and the dissent seek to call the shooter’s initial trigger pull a “function of the trigger” while ignoring the subsequent “bumps” of the shooter’s finger against the trigger before every additional shot. But, 5845(b) does not define a machine gun based on what type of human input engages the trigger – whether it be a pull, bump, or something else. Nor does it define a machine gun based on whether the shooter has assistance engaging the trigger.
Michael Cargill, a Texas gun shop owner, challenged the ban. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Cargill, leading to the Biden administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court. The appeals court argued that the ATF’s 2018 reversal of its previous stance on bump stocks was an overreach, essentially banning the devices “by administrative fiat.”
As is typical with Second Amendment issues, the left writes opinions based not on fact or objectiveness, but based on feelings. The dissent, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, criticized the majority’s decision as “dangerously narrow” and asserted without proof that the interpretation would have “deadly consequences” despite the fact that millions of law-abiding citizens who own bump stocks have committed no crimes.
One other extremely positive outcome from the case is that the dissenting opinion acknowledges that the AR-15 is NOT a machine gun and is in common use. This could be a critical defense against the left’s attempts to push forward an assault weapons ban this year. Sotomayor writes:
Semiautomatic weapons are not “machine guns” under the statute. Take, for instance, an AR-15-style semiautomatic assault rifle. To rapidly fire an AR-15, a shooter must rapidly pull the trigger himself. It is “semi” automatic because, although the rifle automatically loads a new cartridge into the chamber after it is fired, it fires only one shot each time the shooter pulls the trigger.
Thus, the AR-15 is functionally equivalent to and no more dangerous than any other semi-automatic rifle, making it hard to ban by name under any “assault weapons” ban argument. Second Amendment lawyer, author, and scholar, Mark Smith made similar observations on his social media channels.
