Supreme Court bump stock ruling

Should the Supreme Court have reversed the national bump stock ban? Viewpoints from multiple sides.

Jun 21, 2024

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What’s happening

Last week, the Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, gun accessories that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire at rates similar to automatic weapons. The Court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines with the 3 liberal justices dissenting. (Bans in at least 15 states and Washington DC are expected to stay in place.)

What are bump stocks: Bump stocks are attachments that replace the standard stock (i.e., butt) of a semiautomatic weapon to enable a shooter to fire faster and more continuously. They work by enabling the gun to “bump” back and forth between the shooter’s trigger finger and shoulder, leveraging the force of the gun’s recoil. Firing rates can reach 400-800 rounds per minute, as high as some automatic weapons which can shoot between 700-950 rounds per minute.

Why they were banned: An impetus for the ban was the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, the deadliest in modern US history, which killed 58 and wounded 500+. The shooter used weapons equipped with bump stocks, firing an estimated 1,000+ rounds in 11 minutes.

In response to the shooting, in 2018 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) issued a ruling that outlawed bump stocks, determining they fall under the definition of “machineguns” according to the National Firearms Act (1934). The National Firearms Act (1934) heavily restricted the possession of machineguns until the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act (1986) banned their possession outright.

Why the Court reversed the ban: The case came to the Supreme Court through appeal of a lower court ruling in favor of reversing the ban. The Court affirmed the lower court ruling, determining that bump stocks do not meet the National Firearms Act’s definition of “machinegun,” defined as “any weapon which shoots…automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

In his concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito stressed that it is up to Congress to pass legislation that amends existing law to include restrictions on bump stocks rather than leaving regulatory agencies to reinterpret the law.

Reactions to the ruling focused on the Court’s reading of existing law and the merits of banning bump stocks. This week, we bring you the viewpoints from multiple sides. Let us know what you think.

Notable viewpoints

More supportive of the ruling to overturn the bump stock ban:

Bump stocks do not make semiautomatic weapons machineguns.

The National Firearms Act (1934) specifically restricts possession of machineguns defined as weapons that can fire more than one round automatically with a “single function of the trigger;” since bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic weapons require the release of the trigger mechanism to fire each subsequent round, they do not qualify as machineguns. (Summarized from majority ruling.)
The defining feature of a machinegun is that the firing of multiple rounds is automated within the gun and requires only holding down the trigger.
Even if a bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic weapon could fire through “a single function of the trigger,” it would not do so “automatically;” to fire continuously with a bump stock, a shooter must apply the right balance of backward and forward pressure, which is not an automatic movement. (Summarized from majority ruling.)

The Supreme Court correctly ruled in favor of the law’s text.

The assumed intent of a law does not override its explicit text; even if the creators of the National Firearms Act (1934) intended to place general limits on a weapon’s rate of fire (as some opponents to the Court’s ruling contend) rather than the extent to which a weapon fires rounds “automatically,” the law says nothing about rates of fire and therefore it cannot be interpreted that way.
“If you put yourself even briefly in the mindset of people from the 1930s – as a good textualist should, when reading a statute written then – it becomes clear that a reference to 'automatic' operation of a gun for purpose of defining ‘machinegun’ was one that ran like a machine due to an internal mechanism, not a way of rigging the user’s hands and arms to make manual operation of the machine easier.” (Dan McLaughlin, National Review.)

Banning bump stocks is not up to federal regulatory agencies and should be legislated by Congress.

The ruling correctly emphasizes the need for Congress to take responsibility and legislate changes to existing gun laws rather than deferring to regulatory agencies like the ATF to stretch interpretations of the existing laws.
“The ATF does not get to turn something like half a million Americans into potential felons without any say-so from Congress.” (Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.)
The Court ruled effectively in-line with existing law, but Congress should amend the law as soon as possible to prevent the use of bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic weapons as functional equivalents to automatic weapons.

The ATF has been inconsistent with its position on bump stocks.

Prior to 2018, the ATF itself had acknowledged on several occasions that using bump stocks on semiautomatic weapons did not qualify them as machineguns, demonstrating an inconsistent and evolving interpretation of what is a static law.

The ATF’s argument that the “presumption against ineffectiveness” rule applies to the case is invalid.

While the ATF attempts to strengthen its argument under the “presumption against ineffectiveness” rule – which says interpretations of a law should not make it easy for offenders to get around it – the rule does not hold weight because the law explicitly bans machineguns and allowing bump stocks is far from rendering it ineffective in doing so. (Summarized from majority ruling.)

More opposed to the ruling to overturn the bump stock ban:

Bump stocks make semiautomatic weapons machineguns.

“A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle is a machinegun because (1) with a single pull of the trigger, a shooter can (2) fire continuous shots without any human input beyond maintaining forward pressure.” (Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissenting opinion.)
Both an automatic rifle and a bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle only require “a single function of the trigger.” For an automatic rifle, that function is the initial trigger pull and holding backward pressure on the trigger. For a bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle, that function is the initial trigger pull and holding forward pressure on the gun. The only difference is that the mechanism is external in the case of the bump stock. (Summarized from dissenting opinion of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.)
Common sense says that a semiautomatic weapon outfitted with a bump stock, which enables the firing of 400-800 rounds per minute, is for all intents and purposes a machinegun.

The Supreme Court made an overly narrow determination.

Justice Clarence Thomas’s emphasis on the reengagement of the gun’s internal trigger mechanism after each shot as defining a “single function of the trigger” effectively creates a new definition of machinegun that disregards the text of the law.
US Code 5845, which defines “machinegun” under the National Firearms Act (1934), also restricts any part “for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun,” which the ATF justifiably used to support its ban of bump stocks.

The existing law’s intent was to ban weapons capable of high rates of fire.

The majority opinion diverges from the Court’s usual adherence to the “ordinary understanding” of the terms used in legislation, as Congress in 1934 likely understood weapons like bump stocks would fall under its “machinegun” definition.

Bump stocks are dangerous and should be outlawed through any means possible.

Failing to outlaw bump stocks now through Supreme Court action could have deadly consequences if there is a prolonged delay in Congress enacting legislation.
“The majority’s artificially narrow definition hamstrings the Government’s efforts to keep machineguns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.” (Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissenting opinion.)

Conservative politics have played a role in permitting bump stocks.

The Supreme Court’s decision to deny the federal government the ability to outlaw bump stocks is more a reflection of their conservative politics and bias toward gun rights than effective reading of the law.
Leaving it to Congress to revise the law is unlikely to quickly resolve the danger of bump stock legality given previous attempts have been blocked by Republicans and influenced by the gun lobby.

Other viewpoints:

Any congressional action aimed at restricting the use of bump stocks should be careful not to outlaw or criminalize more minor modifications to semiautomatic weapons that people use for legal purposes, which would violate the Second Amendment and likely fail to pass both chambers.
The reversal of the ATF’s own view on bump stocks after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre is a sign of what can go wrong when regulatory bodies like the ATF are left by Congress to act on their own interpretations of the law.
Because there were two competing rules (the “rule of lenity” and the “presumption against ineffectiveness” rule) on how statutory text should be interpreted in this case, there was no clear answer and the justices were effectively able to pick the outcomes they wanted; therefore, it’s no surprise the ruling split along party lines.

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