US Supreme Court Overturns Ban on Bump Stocks
June 14, 2024- Posted by Larry E. Holtz, Esq.
On June 14, 2024, the United States Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision in Garland v. Cargill, threw out a ban on bump stocks, finding that the Justice Department exceeded its authority by classifying the device, which modifies a semiautomatic weapon to fire with the speed and lethality of military arms, as a machine gun.
The opinion, authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, strikes down a rule issued in the aftermath of a 2017 massacre in Las Vegas, Nevada, when a gunman using semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks fired hundreds of rounds into a crowd, killing 58 people and wounding over 500 more.
Federal law defines a “machinegun” 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.” 26 U.S.C. §5845(b). With a machinegun, a shooter can fire multiple times, or even continuously, by engaging the trigger only once. This capability distinguishes a machinegun from a semiautomatic firearm. With a semiautomatic firearm, the shooter can fire only one time by engaging the trigger. Using a technique called bump firing, shooters can fire semiautomatic firearms at rates approaching those of some machineguns. Although bump firing does not require any additional equipment, a “bump stock” is an accessory designed to make the technique easier.
“This case asks whether a bump stock—an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire)—converts the rifle into a “machinegun.” The Court held that it does not. Said the Court: “We conclude that semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” because it does not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”
For many years, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) consistently took the position that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks were not machineguns under §5845(b). The ATF abruptly changed course after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, reversing its previous guidance and amending its regulations to provide that bump stocks are machineguns. See 83 Fed. Reg. 13442. The new Rule ordered owners of bump stocks either to destroy or surrender them to ATF to avoid criminal prosecution
In this case, Michael Cargill surrendered two bump stocks to ATF under protest, and then filed suit to challenge the Rule, arguing that the ATF lacked statutory authority to promulgate the Rule because bump stocks are not “machineguns” as defined in §5845(b). At the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, agreed, holding that the ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classified a bump stock as a “machinegun” under §5845(b).
Said the Court: A semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” as defined by §5845(b) because: (1) it cannot fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger” and (2) even if it could, it would not do so “automatically.” A bump stock merely reduces the amount of time that elapses between separate “functions” of the trigger. Accordingly, the ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns.