On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned a ban imposed by Trump on bump stocks, a kind of gun attachment that was used in the bloodiest mass shooting in modern US history and which lets semi-automatic weapons fire like machine guns.
In 2017, a shooter in Las Vegas used assault weapons to attack a country music festival. In response, the Trump administration changed its mind and outlawed bump stocks. The high court ruled, 6-3, that this was illegal under federal law. In only 11 minutes, he shot more than 1,000 bullets into the crowd, killing 60 and wounding hundreds more. The Justice Department misclassified the attachments as unlawful machine guns, according to a Texas gun store owner who filed a lawsuit against the prohibition, according to the AP.
Using a technique similar to that of a regular machine gun, bump stocks capture the energy of a gun's recoil and use it to push the trigger against the shooter's finger, which keeps the gun moving at a constant hundred rounds per minute. Bump stocks are already illegal in fifteen states as well as the District of Columbia. The FBI concluded under previous presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama that bump stocks did not turn semiautomatic rifles into machine guns. Following the massacre in Las Vegas and the subsequent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, which claimed 17 lives, the agency overturned both rulings at Trump's insistence. Saying that the ATF made the correct decision was the Biden administration.
Justices on the left side of the court said that it was "common sense" that anything that could fire a "torrent of bullets" qualified as a machine gun for purposes of federal law. According to MSNBC's Kyle Griffin, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent, "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." Nevertheless, conservative justices questioned the ATF's decision to reverse its position a decade after deeming the attachments lawful, as well as why Congress had not taken action to outlaw bump stocks. Following a divide among lower courts, the top court took up the matter. According to the plaintiffs' court filings, there were around 520,000 bump stocks in use when the prohibition was implemented in 2019. As a result, owners were forced to destroy or surrender them, resulting in a cumulative loss estimated at $100 million.
In 2017, a shooter in Las Vegas used assault weapons to attack a country music festival. In response, the Trump administration changed its mind and outlawed bump stocks. The high court ruled, 6-3, that this was illegal under federal law. In only 11 minutes, he shot more than 1,000 bullets into the crowd, killing 60 and wounding hundreds more. The Justice Department misclassified the attachments as unlawful machine guns, according to a Texas gun store owner who filed a lawsuit against the prohibition, according to the AP.
Using a technique similar to that of a regular machine gun, bump stocks capture the energy of a gun's recoil and use it to push the trigger against the shooter's finger, which keeps the gun moving at a constant hundred rounds per minute. Bump stocks are already illegal in fifteen states as well as the District of Columbia. The FBI concluded under previous presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama that bump stocks did not turn semiautomatic rifles into machine guns. Following the massacre in Las Vegas and the subsequent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, which claimed 17 lives, the agency overturned both rulings at Trump's insistence. Saying that the ATF made the correct decision was the Biden administration.
Justices on the left side of the court said that it was "common sense" that anything that could fire a "torrent of bullets" qualified as a machine gun for purposes of federal law. According to MSNBC's Kyle Griffin, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent, "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." Nevertheless, conservative justices questioned the ATF's decision to reverse its position a decade after deeming the attachments lawful, as well as why Congress had not taken action to outlaw bump stocks. Following a divide among lower courts, the top court took up the matter. According to the plaintiffs' court filings, there were around 520,000 bump stocks in use when the prohibition was implemented in 2019. As a result, owners were forced to destroy or surrender them, resulting in a cumulative loss estimated at $100 million.
