Supreme Court overturns Trump-era federal ban on wholesale stocks

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Trump-era federal ban on wholesale stocks, ruling that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority in banning the devices. The vote was 6-3, with all three liberals on the court angry.

President Trump ordered the ban in 2017 after a single shooter at a Las Vegas concert used multiple percussion-modified weapons to kill 60 people and injure 400, all in the span of 11 minutes. The subsequent ATF regulation banned bump stocks on the grounds that they turned legal semi-automatic weapons into illegal machine guns. But on Friday, the vast conservative majority of the Supreme Court invalidated the law.

Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machine gun” because it does not fire automatically. Reinforcing his opinion with six diagrams illustrating how bump stocks work, Thomas noted that the ATF regulations were a reversal of the agency's previous position.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito conceded that “the Congress which enacted” the 1986 law at issue here “would have seen no material difference between a machine gun and a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a stock.” But he said the terms of the statute do not authorize the ban and only Congress can change that.

Writing on behalf of the dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the conservative majority of once again turning a blind eye to the reality of gun violence and making it even more difficult to enact measures to prevent bloodshed.

The dispute between the majority and the dissent focused on the operation of a weapon modified by a bump stock. Joseph Blocher, co-director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, explains that with a bump stock, the shooter places his finger on the finger rest of the stock and pushes it forward. “What the bump stock basically does is bounce the gun,” he says. “It’s the act of bumping back and forth against your trigger finger. So as long as you hold the finger and the stock is working, it will continue to fire. So functionally it's a machine gun and no one seems to disagree on that point.

But Justice Thomas, speaking for the majority, said the bump stock didn't change the situation. internal firing mechanism, it therefore cannot be classified as an illegal machine gun.

Justice Sotomayor, in a rare oral dissent from the court, called “myopic” the “focus” on the internal functions of the weapon and not the rapid-fire function that is added by a humped stock, a mechanism that allows the shooter to fire. up to 800 strokes per minute. Sotomayor concluded: “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. »

The decision was a bitter disappointment for gun control advocates. Kari Kuefler, who survived the Las Vegas shooting with her three-month-old baby, cried Friday as she spoke about the Supreme Court's decision and its repercussions.

“People are now struggling to have safe spaces, from their homes to their churches to their schools to their workplaces,” she said. “Where are we going?” she asked. “We need to know that our government is fighting to get this back for us. »

Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA, sees Friday's ruling as part of the high court's aversion to agency regulations in general. “This is just another shot across the arc,” he said, adding that other gun control regulations could soon be on the chopping block, which would make “much more difficult” for the ATF to regulate firearms.

The White House knows it too. President Biden on Friday quickly called on Congress to ban bulk stocks, but the prospects for such a move are murky at best, given the continuing gridlock of modern times. And the gun lobby is very strategic in fighting these measures, observes UCLA's Winkler, author of Shooting : The Battle for the Right to Bear Arms in America.

“This decision demonstrates the success of the NRA’s long-term strategy to fight gun control,” he observes. “After the Las Vegas massacre, the Trump administration and members of Congress were poised to pass new legislation banning bull stocks. The NRA interfered, pushing the Trump administration to ban bull stocks through administrative agency regulation.

He said the NRA was betting that given the Supreme Court's current hostility toward agency regulations, the court would eventually strike down the wholesale stock ban. It turned out to be a good bet.

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