Justices seem divided on legality of bump stocks
WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared deeply torn about whether the devices that turn a semi-automatic rifle into something closer to a machine gun are legal, with some indicating a wariness over striking down the ban on the controversial devices known as “bump stocks.”
Conservatives − who dominate the court − expressed concern about the harm caused by the devices, but wondered whether the federal government too broadly interpreted the law when declaring “bump stocks” illegal in 2018.
“I can certainly understand why these items should be made illegal,” Justice Neil Gorsuch told the Justice Department during oral arguments on whether the ban should be upheld. “But we’re dealing with a statute that was enacted in the 1930s, and through many administrations, the government took the position that these bump stocks are not machine guns.”
At issue in the bump stocks case was whether to strike down a Trump-era ban on the devices — a question that many of the justices struggled with.
“Intuitively, I’m entirely sympathetic to your argument. It seems like, yes, that this is functioning like a machine gun would,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said. “I think the question is, why didn’t Congress pass that legislation to make this cover it more clearly?”
After a gunman used bump stocks on some of his 22 semi-automatic rifles to mow down concertgoers in Las Vegas in 2017, then-President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to regulate the devices.
But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ determination that a bump stock met the definition of a machine gun was different from what the agency said in the past − another sticking point for some of the justices.
The court’s three liberal justices, meanwhile, repeatedly tried to bring the focus back to the effect of bump stocks.
“At some point, you have to apply a little bit of common sense to the way you read a statute,” said Justice Elena Kagan, who used to go hunting with the late Justice
Antonin Scalia, “and understand that this statute comprehends is a weapon that fires a multitude of shots with a single human action.”
Bump stocks combine two legal devices, a plastic stock and a firearm, that together function like a machine gun. The bump stock harnesses the recoil of the rifle to accelerate trigger pulls, technically “bumping” the trigger for each shot after it bounces off the shooter’s shoulder. A rifle can then fire between 400 and 800 rounds per minute.
The Las Vegas shooting, in which 58 people were killed and hundreds were injured, was the deadliest mass shooting in the nation’s history.
The court decision turns on competing explanations of how a bump stock works and whether it meets the legal definition of a machine gun.
Does it allow the weapon to be continually fired once the shooter depresses the trigger? Or must the gun’s trigger be reactivated by the shooter between every shot?
The amended law, originally passed in 1934 after gangsters like John Dillinger used machine guns to rob banks, refers to “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.”
The lawyer for Michael Cargill, a gun shop owner and gun rights advocate from Austin, Texas who sued the government over the ban, said there’s nothing “automatic” about using a bump stock. The shooter has to press forward on the front grip of the rifle.
Justice Samuel Alito asked the challenger’s attorney if there’s a reason Congress may have wanted to ban machine guns but not bump stocks.
Mitchell said bump stocks can help those who have problems with finger dexterity or with arthritis.
That prompted an incredulous Justice Sonya Sotomayor to ask why Congress would think a person with arthritis would need to shoot 400 to 800 rounds per minute.
“If you don’t let a person without arthritis do that,” she asked, “why would you permit a person with arthritis to do it?”