Supreme Court releases landmark gun decision

Members of the Supreme Court issued a decision which struck down the federal ban on bump stocks since the devices do not meet the definition of a machine gun.

The decision released on Friday said that bump stocks, devices which can be used with semiautomatic firearms to increase firing rates, cannot be classified as machine guns according to the definition in the National Firearms Act of 1934. The six conservative-leaning Justices were in favor of striking the ban, while the three progressive-leaning Justices were not in favor of striking the ban.

Justice Clarence Thomas noted in the majority opinion that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives once said bump stocks are not machine guns but reversed course in response to the 2017 shooting in Las Vegas. Justice Sonya Sotomayor said in her dissent that she still considers the devices to be machine guns.

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 said. 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 machine gun, I respectfully dissent.

Justice Samuel Alito added in a concurring opinion that there is simply no other way to read the statutory language other than to see that bump stocks are not affected. He said Congress would need to amend the law if they desire to prohibit bump stocks.

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 machine gun, he wrote. But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the laws meaning.

Several states have enacted or attempted to enact their own bans on bump stocks in the years since the Las Vegas massacre: states such as Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Washington, and Nevada have passed legislation outlawing the devices.

Vice President Kamala Harris issued a statement rebuking the decision of the Supreme Court. Weapons of war have no place on the streets of a civil society, she contended. Unfortunately, todays Supreme Court ruling strikes down this important, common-sense regulation on devices that convert semiautomatic rifles into weapons that can fire hundreds of bullets per minute.

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