Bump Stock Ban Overturned by Supreme Court Before DeSantis Ruling

Lina Portman3 weeks ago

0 3 minutes read

As a presidential candidate last December, Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized bans on gun racks and bump stocks issued by his opponent, former President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden.

“It’s just a piece of plastic,” DeSantis said during an appearance at the Crossroads Shooting Sports booth in Johnston, Iowa. “All of a sudden people are going to become criminals because they have a piece of plastic?” This echoed precedent when he called for the repeal of the two federal bans.

He had one. The Supreme Court on Friday struck down the Trump administration's ban on wholesale stocks 6-3 on ideological grounds in Garland v. Cargill. The Biden administration's ban on gun slings still stands.

Stock guns – controversial devices that allow someone to fire hundreds of rounds per minute from a semi-automatic rifle – were classified as machine guns (and therefore illegal) in 2018 by the Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives after a gunman. used emergency supplies to kill nearly 60 people at a concert in Las Vegas in October 2017.

But the majority of the Supreme Court ruled that this recharacterization was incorrect. Not for Second Amendment reasons, but because they said the ATF had overstepped its bounds by changing the technical definition of machine guns.

“A bump stock no more turns a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun than does a shooter with a high-speed trigger,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his opinion for the majority.

“In addition to curbing the ATF's illegal rule,” the National Rifle Association (NRA) said Friday, “the Cargill decision will help ensure that future unelected government officials cannot ban firearms and their accessories by administrative decision.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who read the dissent, said the majority used an “artificially narrow definition” to reach a conclusion that would have “deadly consequences.”

Bump stocks, however, remain illegal in Florida. They were banned here in 2018 when then-Gov. Rock Scott signed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act in the wake of the horrific Parkland school shootings. Safety stocks were not used in this shooting, but were included with several other gun control measures.

What are bump stocks?

Generally speaking, semi-automatic firearms fire one round each time you pull the trigger. Automatic firearms fire continuously while you hold the trigger. In 1934, the United States passed the National Firearms Act which, among other restrictions and requirements, banned “machine guns” (fully automatic weapons) in most cases. This definition was expanded in 1968.

In the United States, fully automatic weapons are closely regulated and generally prohibited for civilian use. Devices that convert a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon are also prohibited.

A “bump stock”, also called a “bump fire stock” or “slide fire” after the company that invented it, is a device that allows a semi-automatic weapon to fire much faster, closer to the speed of a fully automatic weapon. It replaces the standard stock (the part that rests against the shooter's shoulder) on a semi-automatic rifle and uses the recoil of the weapon to “push” the trigger into the shooter's finger much faster than the shooter would probably be able to shoot without it.

A New York Times analysis of the Las Vegas shooting found that the shooter, using shock rifles, fired about 90 shots into the crowd in just 10 seconds.

Justice Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion, said there was no doubt that when Congress banned machine guns, lawmakers would have seen no real difference between a machine gun and a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a butt. But that's not how the law was written, he said.

Has the United States already banned Bump Stocks?

The ATF has gone back and forth on bump stocks.

The 2019 rules required stock owners to destroy them or turn them over to the ATF. But in 2010, the ATF classified bump stocks as firearm parts, not machine guns.

At different times between 2008 and 2017, the ATF sent 10 private letters classifying bump stock devices as unregulated parts or accessories according to FactCheck.org, although in letters from 2006 and 2013, specific models of bump stock bump were found to be in violation.

It was only after Stephen Paddock rained more than 1,100 rounds in 10 minutes on a crowd on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel, killing 58 and injuring more than 800, before outrage erupted. reasons for the ban.

“As I promised, the Department of Justice will issue a rule today banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandatory comment period,” Trump tweeted in March 2018. “We WILL BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.”

Lina Portman

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