Supreme Court strikes down Trump-era federal ban on bump stocks

The U.S. Supreme Court building. (Mandel Ngan/AFP)

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down nan national prohibition connected bump stocks Friday, declaring that nan Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority erstwhile it banned nan devices on grounds they person different ineligible semi-automatic weapons into forbidden instrumentality guns. The ballot was 6–3, pinch nan court’s 3 liberals successful angry dissent.

Writing for nan court’s blimpish supermajority, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that a semi-automatic firearm equipped pinch a bump banal is not a “machine gun” because it does not occurrence much than 1 changeable “by a azygous usability of nan trigger,” arsenic nan statute requires. He added that moreover if it could, it would not do truthful “automatically.” He wrote that nan ATF exceeded its statutory authority by classifying bump stocks arsenic instrumentality guns.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “the Congress that enacted” nan rule astatine rumor present “would not person seen immoderate worldly quality betwixt a machinegun and a semiautomatic firearm equipped pinch a bumpstock. But nan statutory matter is clear, and we must travel it.” He added that Congress could — if it wanted — amend nan law.

The mobility earlier nan tribunal was whether a bump banal converted a semi-automatic limb into a instrumentality gun. The tribunal said it does not.

President Trump ordered nan ATF to prohibition nan waste and possession of bump stocks successful 2018 aft a azygous gunman successful Las Vegas, utilizing aggregate guns modified by bump stocks, killed 60 group and wounded 400 much — each successful nan abstraction of 11 minutes. Machine guns person been forbidden successful nan U.S. since 1934, almost a century, and Congress has doubly amended nan National Firearms Act to opportunity that instrumentality weapon parts themselves count arsenic instrumentality guns. But connected Friday, nan Supreme Court ruled that nan prohibition connected bump stocks went excessively far.

Writing for nan dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused nan blimpish mostly of erstwhile again turning a unsighted oculus to nan reality of weapon violence, and making it yet much difficult to adopt measures aimed astatine preventing bloodshed. She said nan “majority’s artificially constrictive meaning hamstrings nan Government’s efforts to support machineguns from gunmen for illustration nan Las Vegas shooter.”

“When I spot a vertebrate that walks for illustration a duck, swims for illustration a duck, and quacks for illustration a duck, I telephone that vertebrate a duck,” Sotomayor wrote.