Supreme Court appears torn on gun bump stocks

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appeared torn Wednesday about a challenge to a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a gun accessory that allows semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns and was used in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

The high court is weighing whether the Trump administration followed federal law when it reversed course and banned bump stocks after a gunman in Las Vegas, Nev., attacked a country music festival with assaultstyle rifles in 2017. Many of the weapons were equipped with bump stocks and high-capacity magazines. More than 1,000 rounds were fired into the crowd in 11 minutes, killing 60 people and injuring hundreds more.

The arguments largely focused on whether guns with a bump stock can be considered illegal machine guns under federal law. A Texas gun shop owner argues bump stocks don’t change the core function of a semi-automatic weapon enough to make it illegal. The Biden administration says bump stocks fall firmly under the legal definition of machine gun.

It is the latest gun case to come before the justices and offers a fresh test for a court with a conservative supermajority to define the limits of gun restrictions in an era where mass shootings are exceedingly prevalent.

Conservative justices raised questions about whether machine-gun laws dating to the 1930s apply to bump stocks and about the Justice Department’s previous finding that the accessories were legal.

“Intuitively, I am entirely sympathetic to your argument,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, “I think the question is, why didn’t Congress pass that legislation to make this cover it more clearly?”

Justices from the court’s liberal wing suggested it was “common sense” that bump stocks would fall under laws originally aimed at Prohibition-era violence from gangsters such as Al Capone. “This is in the heartland of what they were concerned about, which is anything that takes just a little human action to produce more than one shot,” Justice Elena Kagan said.

Federal appeals courts have been divided over bump stocks. The case before the court differs from other gun cases — including a landmark 2022 decision in which the six-justice conservative majority expanded gun rights — because it’s not directly about the Second Amendment.

Instead, the plaintiffs argue the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives overstepped its authority in imposing the ban. The agency had previously decided bump stocks should not be classified as machine guns and therefore not be banned.

Bump stocks are accessories that replace a rifle’s stock, the part that rests against the shoulder. They harness the gun’s recoil energy so that the trigger bumps against the shooter’s stationary finger, allowing the gun to fire rapidly.

They were invented in the early 2000s. Under Republican President George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama, the ATF decided that bump stocks didn’t transform semi-automatic weapons into machine guns. The agency reversed that decision at Trump’s urging after the shooting in Las Vegas and another mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that left 17 dead.