Posted on 06/14/24
| News Source: The Hill
The Supreme Court invalidated the Trump-era ban on bump stocks along ideological lines on Friday, ending the nationwide ban on the devices, which convert semi-automatic weapons to fire hundreds of rounds per minute.
The Biden administration defended the regulation in front of the high court after the Trump administration first implemented it in the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, the deadliest in U.S. history. The shooter had used a bump stock to kill 58 people and wound hundreds of others.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations have since made possessing the devices a criminal offense by newly classifying them as machine guns under longstanding federal law.
In a 6-3 decision authored by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, the court said the classification is an impermissible reading of the law, ruling in favor of the challenger.
“We conclude that [a] semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it does not fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger,’” Thomas wrote, quoting the statutory definition.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who joined Thomas’s opinion, also wrote separately to stress there is a “simple remedy” that would allow a nationwide ban on bump stocks.
“Congress can amend the law — and perhaps would have done so already if ATF had stuck with its earlier interpretation. Now that the situation is clear, Congress can act,” Alito wrote.