US Supreme Court rejects federal ban on gun ‘bump stocks’

By Andrew Chung and John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declared unlawful a federal ban on “bump stock” devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns, rejecting yet another firearms restriction – this time one enacted under Republican former President Donald Trump.

The justices, in a 6-3 ruling authored by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, upheld a lower court’s decision siding with Michael Cargill, a gun shop owner and gun rights advocate from Austin, Texas, who challenged the ban by claiming that a U.S. agency improperly interpreted a federal law banning machine guns as extending to bump stocks. The conservative justices were in the majority, with the liberal justices dissenting.

The rule was imposed in 2019 by Trump’s administration after the devices were used during a 2017 mass shooting that killed 58 people at a Las Vegas country music festival. Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration defended the rule in court.

Michael Tyler, communications director for Biden’s re-election campaign, criticized the court’s decision.

“Weapons of war have no place on the streets of America, but Trump’s Supreme Court justices have decided the gun lobby is more important than the safety of our kids and our communities,” Tyler said, referring to the fact that Trump appointed three of the conservative justices.

The case centered on how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a U.S. Justice Department agency, interpreted a U.S. law called the National Firearms Act, which defined machine guns as weapons that can “automatically” fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”

“We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machine gun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’ 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 machine guns,” Thomas wrote.

Federal law prohibits the sale or possession of machine guns, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Bump stocks use a semiautomatic’s recoil to allow it to slide back and forth while “bumping” the shooter’s trigger finger, resulting in rapid fire. Federal officials had said the rule was needed to protect public safety in a nation facing persistent firearms violence.

In a dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the ruling would have “deadly consequences,” saying the court’s majority “casts aside Congress’s definition of ‘machinegun’ and seizes upon one that is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the statutory text and unsupported by context or purpose.”

“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. A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.’ Because I, like Congress, call that a machinegun, I respectfully dissent,” Sotomayor said.

After a gunman used weapons outfitted with bump stocks in the Las Vegas shooting spree that killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more, Trump’s administration prohibited the devices. In a reversal of the agency’s previous stance, the ATF decided that bump stocks were covered by the National Firearms Act.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion on Friday: “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 (existing law,” Alito said.

“Now that the situation is clear, Congress can act,” Alito added.

EXPANSIVE VIEW OF GUN RIGHTS

The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative minority, has taken an expansive view of gun rights, striking down gun restrictions in major cases in 2008, 2010 and in 2022. In that 2022 decision, struck down New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home and set a tough new standard for determining the legality of gun regulations. Unlike those three cases, this challenge was not centered on the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Mark Chenoweth, president of the conservative legal group New Civil Liberties Alliance that represented Cargill, hailed the court’s ruling.

“The statute Congress passed did not ban bump stocks, and ATF does not have the power to do so on its own,” Chenoweth said, calling the ruling “completely consistent with the Constitution’s assignment of all legislative power to Congress.”

John Feinblatt, president of the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, called on Congress to pass a law banning bump stocks.

“Guns outfitted with bump stocks fire like machine guns, they kill like machine guns, and they should be banned like machine guns – but the Supreme Court just decided to put these deadly devices back on the market,” Feinblatt said.

In January 2023, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Cargill in a divided opinion.

The United States is a country deeply divided over how to address gun violence that Biden has called a “national embarrassment.” Biden and many Democrats favor tougher gun restrictions, while Republicans often oppose them. In this case, however, it was a Republican administration that implemented the regulation.

Trump is the Republican candidate challenging Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election.

The justices also are expected to rule by the end of June in another gun rights case. They heard arguments in November over the legality of a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York and John Kruzel in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)