Supreme Court strikes down ban on bulk stocks

ANALYSIS OF REVIEWS

The Supreme Court on Friday struck down a rule banning wholesale stocks, issued by the Trump administration after a 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert. By a 6-3 vote, the justices rejected the federal government's argument that rifles equipped with bump stocks are machine guns, which are generally prohibited under federal law. In an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court's conservative justices pointed out that Congress could have enacted a law banning all weapons capable of a high rate of fire, but it did not do so — and the Office of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives has therefore been It is erroneous to interpret the federal ban on machine guns as extending to bump stocks.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in an opinion joined by the court's other, more liberal justices, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She warned that the majority's decision “will have deadly consequences.”

The bump stock is an accessory that transforms a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon capable of discharging at a rate of hundreds of rounds per minute. The Trump administration issued the rule at the center of the case in 2018. It followed a mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas in which the shooter used semi-automatic rifles equipped with 'a bump device to kill 60 people and injure over 60,500 more. The rule, which concluded that bumps are machine guns, was a reversal from the ATF's previous position, which until 2018 stated that only certain types of bumps were machine guns. Under the 2018 rule, anyone with bump stock had to destroy it or drop it off at a nearby ATF office to avoid criminal penalties.

Michael Cargill, a U.S. Army veteran who owns a gun store in Austin, had to turn over two replacement stocks he owned to the ATF. After that, he went to court to challenge the rule.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit struck down the rule in the Cargill case, prompting the Biden administration to take the matter to the Supreme Court. On Friday, the justices upheld the 5th Circuit's decision.

Unlike some gun rights cases recently brought before the Supreme Court, the Cargill case did not involve the Second Amendment right to bear arms, but rather a federal law that defines a machine gun as any weapon capable of firing “more than one shot,” “automatically” and “by a single operation of the trigger.” In a highly technical 19-page ruling, Thomas concluded that the law does not support the ATF's rule prohibiting bull stocks First, he explained, semi-automatic rifles equipped with bump stocks do not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger. Each time a shooter fires the rifle, a Thomas pointed out, the shooter must “release the trigger pressure and allow it to reset before re-engaging the trigger for another shot,” he writes, “simply reduces the time that elapses between ‘functions’.” distinct from the trigger” by allowing the shooter to quickly pull the trigger again.

Furthermore, Thomas continues, even if a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a stock fires more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger,” it does not do so “automatically,” as also required by law . Thomas explained that if a shooter wants to fire multiple shots using a semi-automatic rifle with a stock, he or she “must also actively maintain the proper forward pressure on the rifle's front grip with its trigger “. According to him, this additional contribution from the shooter means that the shots are not automatic.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a short concurring opinion in which he emphasized that the majority's decision reflects the only way to interpret the machine gun ban. But he acknowledged that “the Congress that enacted” the machine gun ban “would have seen no material difference between a machine gun and a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a stock.” However, Alito emphasized, “the statutory text is clear and we must follow it.”

Alito added that there is “a simple remedy to the disparate treatment of shock stocks and machine guns.” Congress can change the law – and might already have done so if the ATF had stuck to its previous interpretation. Now that the situation is clear,” Alito concluded, “Congress can act.”

In his dissent, Sotomayor interpreted the text of the federal machine gun ban differently. Emphasizing that “[t]it’s not a difficult case,” she argued: “[a]All textual evidence points to the same interpretation”: semi-automatic rifles equipped with bump stocks are machine guns. Focusing on the fact that a shooter using rifles equipped with shock stocks can fire multiple shots with just a pull of the trigger as long as he maintains forward pressure on the barrel or foregrip of the rifle, Sotomayor criticized Thomas for focusing instead on internal mechanisms. which trigger the fire inside the rifle.

And more broadly, Sotomayor argued, Congress wanted to restrict the availability of machine guns “because they eliminated the need for a person to quickly pull the trigger to fire continuously.” “A humpback stock,” she suggested, “serves this function,” allowing a shooter to fire at a rate of up to 400 to 800 rounds per minute. “By setting aside the plain meaning of the law both at the time of its enactment and today,” she concluded, “the majority eviscerates Congress's regulation of machine guns and allows users and manufacturers weapons to circumvent federal law. »

Thomas objected to Sotomayor's suggestion that the majority's decision makes it too easy to circumvent the machine gun ban. “A law is not useless,” he wrote, “merely because it draws a narrower line than any of its conceivable statutory purposes would suggest” – especially when until 2018, the ATF did not interpret the law as prohibiting wholesale stocks.

The dispute over the bump stock rule is one of two cases involving guns and gun rights before the justices this term. In November, the court heard a challenge to the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting anyone subject to a restraining order for domestic violence from possessing a firearm. The judges have not yet made their decision in this case, United States v. Rahimi.

The justices agreed to take up another case next term involving guns: a challenge to the Biden administration's efforts to regulate so-called “ghost guns.” This case will likely be argued in October, with a decision to follow sometime in 2025.

This article was originally published in Howe on the Court.