WASHINGTON — In a defeat for the Biden administration, the Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Trump-era federal ban on bump stocks, gun accessories that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire more quickly, is illegal.
In a 6-3 governing along ideological lineswith the court’s conservative majority, the court held that a nearly 100-year-old law that seeks to ban machine guns cannot legitimately be interpreted to include bump stocks.
The Trump administration imposed the ban after the Mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, in which Stephen Paddock used firearms equipped with a bump stock to open fire at a country music festival, initially killing 58 people. Then-President Donald Trump I called personally for the accessory to be banned.
Writing for the majority, Judge Clarence Thomas said a firearm equipped with the accessory does not meet the definition of a “machine gun” under federal law.
The decision provoked vigorous dissent from liberals Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
“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,” she wrote in reference to bump stocks that allow semiautomatic rifles to operate like machine guns. Sotomayor also took the rare step of reading a summary of his dissent in court.
Even with the federal ban out of the question, supplies will still not be available nationwide. More than a dozen states have already banned them, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit gun control group. Congress could also act.
In a statement, President Joe Biden said he has used “every tool of my administration to eradicate gun violence” and promised to continue to do so.
“We know that thoughts and prayers are not enough,” Biden said. “I urge Congress to ban bump stocks, pass the assault weapons ban, and take additional steps to save lives – send me a bill and I will sign it immediately.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., echoed the point in a statement, saying “the only way to permanently close this gap is through legislation.”
Gun control advocates condemned the decision and raised concerns that some of the state law’s prohibitions could also be overturned.
“We’ve seen bump stocks cause immense destruction and violence,” said Esther Sanchez-Gomez, director of litigation at Giffords Law Center. “The majority of judges today sided with the gun lobby over the safety of the American people. This is a shameful decision.”
Although Trump imposed the ban, a spokeswoman for his campaign expressed no disappointment with the decision, saying the decision “should be respected” and praising his support for gun rights.
The National Rifle Association, a prominent gun rights group, at the time indicated would also support a ban, although he later backed off. The group welcomed Friday’s decision, saying on X that the court had “adequately restricted executive branch agencies to their role of enforcing, not making, the law.”
Sotomayor cited the Las Vegas shooting in her dissent.
“All he had to do was pull the trigger and push the gun forward. The butt did the rest,” she wrote.
The decision, she added, “undermines the government’s efforts to keep machine guns away from armed men like the Las Vegas shooter.”
In a concurring opinion, conservative judge Samuel Alito admitted that, in practical terms, a weapon equipped with a stock is very similar to a machine gun and said that Congress could act to ban the accessory.
The “horrific spate of shootings” in Las Vegas showed how “a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a stock can have the same lethal effect as a machine gun,” strengthening the case for legislative action, he added.
The Supreme Court in 2019 refused to block the regulation. The already conservative court has tilted even further to the right since then, with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, replacing liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020.
Conservatives now have a 6-3 majority that has supported gun rights in previous cases.
The National Firearms Act was enacted in 1934 to regulate machine guns in response to Prohibition-era gangster violence.
The lawsuit was filed by Texas gun owner Michael Cargill, a licensed dealer who owned two shares before the ban took effect and later turned them over to the government.
“More than five years ago I swore that I would defend the Constitution of the United States, even though I was the only plaintiff in the case. That is exactly what I did,” he said in a statement in response to the ruling.
Bump stocks use the recoil energy of a trigger to allow the user to fire up to hundreds of rounds in what the federal government calls “a single movement.”
Cargill lawyers say it’s a difficult skill to master.
Some gun rights advocates, including the National Rifle Association, initially supported then-President Donald Trump’s decision to regulate bump stocks after the Las Vegas shooting, but have since lined up in opposition to it.
The case does not implicate the scope of the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Objectors argue that the government does not have the authority to ban bump stocks under the 1934 law.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 defined “machine gun” to include accessories “for use in converting a weapon” into a machine gun, and the ATF concluded that bump stocks meet that definition.
Much of the legal fight hinged on defining a machine gun as a weapon that can automatically fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”
The government argued that the phrase refers to the shooter’s actions, requiring a single action to fire multiple shots. Cargill’s lawyers argued that it refers to the action inside the firearm when the trigger is pulled. Because a bump stock still requires the trigger to be pulled for each shot, it is not a machine gun, they argued.
The Supreme Court embraced Cargill’s argument, with Thomas writing that a firearm equipped with a stock does not become a machine gun because it “cannot fire more than one shot” with a single trigger function.
“The ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a rule classifying bump stocks as machine guns,” he added.
Lower courts were divided on the issue, with both the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit ruling that the ban was illegal.
The Biden administration appealed both cases, while gun rights advocates challenged the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that upheld the ban.
The Supreme Court has upheld gun rights in cases that directly address the scope of the Second Amendment, including the 2022 ruling that found there is a right to carry a gun outside the home.
But in one case discussed in November, the court indicated it might not be able to strike down some long-standing gun laws in a case involving a ban on the possession of firearms by people accused of domestic violence.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
