BREAKING: Supreme Court strikes down ATF ban on bump stocks

The Supreme Court handed down a decision on Friday in the case of Garland v Cargill, in which the justices ruled 6-3 that the federal ban on "bump stocks" is unlawful. 

The court ruled the "ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies a bump stock as a 'machinegun' under Section 5845(b)." That section defines a machine gun as "any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger."  

Following the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, the ATF issued a rule stating that bump stocks "are machineguns" and ordered that owners of bump stocks either surrender them to the ATF or destroy them. 

The court stated that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a machine gun as defined by law as it does not fire more than one shot "by a single function of the trigger," and that even if it could, it would not do so "automatically." 

"No one disputes that a semiautomatic rifle without a bump stock is not a machinegun because a shooter must release and reset the trigger between every shot. And, any subsequent shot fired after the trigger has been released and reset is the result of a separate and distinct 'function of the trigger.'" 

"Nothing changes when a semiautomatic rifle is equipped with a bump stock. Between every shot, the shooter must release pressure from the trigger and allow it to reset before reengaging the trigger for another shot. A bump stock merely reduces the amount of time that elapses between separate 'functions’ of the trigger." 

Gun owner Michael Cargill brought forth the lawsuit after surrendering two bump stocks to the ATF "under protest." He claimed in the suit that the ATF "lacked statutory authority to promulgate the final Rulse because bomp stocks are not 'machinegun[s]' as defined in Section 5845(b)."

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that during the Las Vegas mass shooting, in which 58 people were killed after a shooter opened fire on a concert from a hotel room, the shooter’s gun was affixed with a bump stock. "All the shooter had to do was pull the trigger and press the gun forward. The bump stock did the rest."

Sotomayor argued against the majority’s definition of a "single function of the trigger," stating that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock fires "automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger."

"Today, the Court puts bump stocks back in civilian hands. To do so, it 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."

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