Supreme Court strikes down Trump-era ban on bump stocks for firearms

Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday invalidated a federal rule enacted during the Trump administration that outlawed bump stocks, devices that greatly increase the rate of fire of semi-automatic weapons.

The 6-3 ruling found that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority when it issued the ban in 2018, following the 2017 mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas, the deadliest in U.S. history. Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion of the court, which split along ideological lines. Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissenting opinion from the bench

“This case asks whether a bump stock — an accessory for a semiautomatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire) — converts the rifle into a ‘machinegun.’ We hold that it does not,” Thomas wrote for the conservative majority.

The court’s ruling unwinds one of the few actions the federal government has taken in recent years to combat gun violence, since Republicans in Congress have opposed comprehensive firearms restrictions. The case did not involve the Second Amendment, but was one of several before the justices this term involving federal regulatory power.

Bump stocks are attachments that increase the rate of fire of semi-automatic rifles to hundreds of rounds per minute. The case, known as Garland v. Cargill, focused on whether the ATF went too far when it banned the devices in 2018 after determining that the definition of a “machine gun” in a 1934 law encompassed bump stocks. Machine guns allow multiple rounds to be fired with the single pull of a trigger and are banned under federal law.

ATF had on numerous occasions between 2008 and 2017 determined that bump stocks didn’t qualify as machine guns and weren’t regulated under the relevant law. But the bureau changed its position following the 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Musical Festival, where a gunman killed 58 people and another 500 were injured and after which Congress failed to take action to regulate the devices.

The shooter used semi-automatic weapons outfitted with bump stocks, allowing him to fire up to 1,000 rounds of ammunition in 11 minutes, according to the FBI.

The bump stock ban

Issued in December 2018, the new rule stated that a rifle equipped with a bump stock qualifies as a machine gun in part because when a shooter pulls the trigger, it initiates a firing sequence that produces more than one shot. That firing sequence is “automatic” because “the device harnesses the firearm’s recoil energy as part of a continuous back-and-forth cycle that allows the shooter to attain continuous firing after a single pull of the trigger.”

Bump stocks replace the standard stock of a semi-automatic rifle and allow the rest of the gun to move back and forth while the stock stays in place. When the gun is fired and the shooter applies forward pressure on the barrel, the rifle recoils back into the stock and bounces forward again, “bumping” the trigger into the shooter’s finger and firing another round. 

The rule from the Trump administration took effect in March 2019. Those who already owned bump stocks were required to destroy or surender the devices to the ATF or face criminal penalties.

During the agency rulemaking process, Michael Cargill bought two bump stocks. After the ban was enacted, he surrendered the devices to ATF and brought a lawsuit against the government in federal court in Texas.

A U.S. district court and three-judge appeals court panel ruled for the ATF, but the full slate of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit invalidated the bump stock ban. 

Cargill’s case was not the only challenge to the regulation. Another bump stock owner prevailed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, but a three-judge appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., upheld the ban after determining that a bump stock is a machine gun under federal law.

The Biden administration backed the bump stock ban and urged the Supreme Court to leave the policy in place. Rifles equipped with the devices are “dangerous and unusual weapons,” Justice Department lawyers argued, saying that bump stocks allow the ban on machine guns implemented in 1986 to be circumvented.