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The ban on bump stocks is one of few federal actions to address mass killings that have become more frequent over the past decade, as Congress and some courts resist efforts to impose restrictions on firearms. It is. The federal government began reviewing bump stock regulations after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, and in early 2018 after the mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. was rekindled.
Michael Cargill, a U.S. Army veteran and gun store owner in Austin, challenged the Trump-era rule after he was forced to surrender two bump stocks. Cargill argued that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives overstepped its authority by reinterpreting long-standing federal restrictions on machine guns to target the device.
The case is one of two gun control cases before the Supreme Court this term, and one of several. It challenges the authority of federal agencies that have long been a target of conservatives wary of government overregulation.
Cargill is represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, one of the conservative legal groups behind the effort to overturn 40 years of legal precedent known as Chevron. Judges are often required to defer to the expertise of agency officials when evaluating statutes.
The lawsuit seeking to recall Cargill’s bump stock devices was filed before the Supreme Court’s conservative majority made a landmark decision to expand gun rights in 2022. The government should point to historical parallels when defending laws that restrict Second Amendment rights. The ruling is at issue in another gun case before the court this session, calling into question the legality of laws that prohibit individuals covered by domestic violence protection orders from owning guns.
By contrast, the questions before the court Wednesday did not directly concern the Second Amendment. Instead, the justices will examine whether ATF officials properly interpreted a statute that has prohibited non-military access to machine guns since 1986. Much of the discussion is likely to center on how bump stocks function and whether their use “equivalent to a single function on a machine gun.” trigger. “
The National Firearms Act defines a machine gun as a firearm that fires, is designed to fire, or that “a single function of the trigger enables the automatic firing of multiple shots without manual reloading.” defined as firearms and parts for which they were designed and intended. Simply “for use in converting weapons into machine guns.”
A bump stock is a plastic or metal molding used in place of a standard rifle stock that rests on the shooter’s shoulder. This device takes advantage of the gun’s natural recoil and allows the rifle to fire. A quick bounce or “bump” against the shooter’s index finger. A rifle with a bump stock can fire an estimated 400 to 800 rounds per minute, a speed comparable to military machine guns, according to court filings.
The Biden administration has defended the Trump administration’s interpretation, saying in court that these devices are “designed and intended to allow users to modify semiautomatic firearms to fire continuously with a single pull of the weapon.” ” Therefore, it can be classified as a machine gun. When the trigger is pulled, hundreds of bullets are fired every minute. ”
Citing the ATF, Attorney General Elizabeth B. Preloger said that in the ATF’s 2018 regulations, the term “automatically” used in the machine gun definition is defined as “the result of an automatic actuation or self-adjusting mechanism. It has been clarified that “it means to function as a This allows for the firing of multiple bullets through a single function of the trigger. ”
Cargill’s lawyers, led by former Texas Attorney General Jonathan Mitchell, dispute the government’s explanation. They say rapid fire is not done in one motion, but by manually activating the trigger repeatedly.
Mitchell writes that the shooter must continuously push the rifle’s barrel or front grip forward with the non-trigger hand and apply rearward pressure on the weapon with the trigger hand.
“These are manual features, and Cargill’s bump stocks do not have any components that ‘automate’ repeated firing,” Mitchell told the judges in a court filing. “There are no motors, springs, electrical devices, or anything else that can automate manual labor.”
Agency evaluations and interpretations of the law regarding bump stock devices have changed over time. In 2003, the ATF announced that the early versions were not machine guns because they could not fire multiple shots with a single trigger press. Three years later, authorities changed their position and classified early models with internal springs as machine guns.
Cargill’s lawyers stress that for nearly a decade, from 2008 to 2017, the federal government did not count newer devices without internal springs as machine guns. During that time, Americans bought 520,000 bump stocks.
President Trump’s bump stock ban gave owners until March 2019 to destroy or surrender their devices. Other lawsuits seeking to block the ban were appealed through three appeals courts to the Supreme Court. Rejected ATF’s challenge to the final rule. The justices did not agree to take any of these cases.
This time, a unanimous panel of district courts and the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with the ATF, upholding the ban. The three-judge panel determined that rifles modified with bump stocks fire multiple shots as a result of a self-regulating mechanism because the weapon is “continuously fired.”[s] Fire until the shooter stops moving forward with his non-shooting hand or the weapon runs out of ammunition. ”
However, the Fifth Circuit reversed that decision after a full panel of judges reviewed the case. A majority of eight judges concluded that the statute’s definition of a machine gun did not include bump stocks, in part because “in order for the shooter to continue firing after he or she has pulled the trigger, “You have to manually maintain forward pressure on the barrel, and you have to manually maintain rearward pressure.” [with the trigger finger]” wrote Judge Jennifer Elrod.
Five other judges argued that the definition was vague, but said that in cases involving criminal law, the court should resolve the issue in Cargill’s favor based on rules of interpretation.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Higginson, along with two of his colleagues, criticized the majority for attempting to “rewrite important public safety laws” and “legalize methods of mass murder.”
The Justice Department then asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
The case is Garland vs Cargill.
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