Supreme Court throws out Trump-era ban on gun bump stocks
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A bump stock installed on an AR-15 rifle in Chantilly, Virgina, in 2017. Photo: Jim watson/AFP via Getty Images)
The Supreme Court on Friday overturned the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives' (ATF) ban on a gun attachment that allows shooters to fire weapons at nearly the rate of a machine gun.
Why it matters: Under former President Trump, the ATF attempted to ban the attachment, called a "bump stock," after a gunman used it in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting — the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Now, they will be back on the market again.
How it works: The device replaces a semiautomatic firearm's standard stock and harnesses the recoil energy of the gun, allowing the weapon to slide and "bump" between the shooter's shoulder and trigger finger.
- It can produce a rate of fire far higher than what could be achieved by an untrained or average shooter using a weapon with a traditional stock.
Zoom in: The court ruled 6-3, with its conservative bloc in the majority and its more liberal judges dissenting.
- Justice Clarence Thomas, writing the majority opinion, said bump stocks don't convert a semiautomatic rifle into what the law defines as a machine gun, which is outlawed by the National Firearms Act of 1934.
- "A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does," Thomas wrote. "Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will fire only one shot for every 'function of the trigger.'"
Justice Samuel Alito concurred in a separate opinion, saying the Las Vegas shooting "demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun" but did not change the statutory definition of a machine gun.
- He added that "an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law's meaning."
The other side: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was joined in a dissenting opinion, by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the court put "bump stocks back in civilian hands" by casting aside Congress's definition of a "machinegun."
- "A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger," Sotomayor wrote. "Because I, like Congress, call that a machinegun, I respectfully dissent."
Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for stricter gun laws, panned the court's ruling.
- "We urge Congress to right this wrong and pass bipartisan legislation banning bump stocks, which are accessories of war that have no place in our communities," said John Feinblatt, Everytown's president, in a statement.
Context: Michael Cargill, a Texas gun store owner, challenged the ban after turning bump stocks over to the ATF after the rule was implemented in 2018.
- Cargill then sued the ATF to get them returned, arguing it did not have statutory authority to issue the rule because bump stocks were not machine guns.
- A machine gun is in part defined under the firearms act as "any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger."
Between the lines: After the Las Vegas shooting, the National Rifle Association (NRA) supported additional regulations on bump stocks through ATF.
- However, the NRA did not support amending the law to make them illegal, which Alito said would have been, and still could be, a stronger way to ban the devices.
- The NRA applauded Friday's decision, saying in a statement that the court had "properly restrained executive branch agencies" with its ruling.
Go deeper: Supreme Court sides with NRA over First Amendment lawsuit
Editor's note: This story was updated with additional background, reaction to and details from the court's ruling.
