The Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks on Friday in a victory for gun rights advocates.
The ban was passed following the use of bump stocks in the deadly 2017 shooting in Las Vegas. Fifty-eight people were killed making it the deadliest mass shooting by one gunman in American history.
But the Supreme Court struck down the ban in a six-three decision. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that bump stocks are not machine guns.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for the court. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored the dissent and was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In the case Garland v Cargill, gun owner Michael Cargill surrendered two bump stocks to the ATF following the ban but then filed a lawsuit.
A district court ruled bump stocks are in line with machine guns, but the ruling was reversed by an appeals court.
‘We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” because it cannot fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger,”’ Thomas wrote in the majority opinion.
‘And, even if it could, it would not do so “automatically.” ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns,’ he continued.
In his concurring opinion, Alito addressed the deadly shooting in Las Vegas where a man opened fire on a music festival from his suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel.
‘The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning. That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending §5845(b),’ he wrote.
‘But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning. There is a simple remedy for the disparate treatment of bump stocks and machineguns,’ he went on.
He wrote that Congress can amend the law.
This story is developing and will be updated.