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Washington – The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the appellate court on Wednesday. Trump-era bump stock ban This is in response to the firearms installed in response to the 2017 mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas.
At issue in the lawsuit is whether bump stocks qualify as “machine guns” under federal law. The controversy is the second firearms controversy the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear this term, but it does not involve the Second Amendment. Rather, the legal battle centers on questions of legal interpretation and whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had the authority to outlaw bump stocks.
Oral arguments in the case known as Garland v. Cargill began Wednesday morning. Audio of the discussion is live-streamed in the player above.
Machine guns have been outright banned since 1986, and federal law states that “machine guns with a single function that fire multiple shots automatically without manual reloading, are designed to fire, or are easily defined as “any weapon that can be restored to fire.” trigger. ” This definition also includes “a part, or a combination of parts, designed and intended solely and exclusively for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun.”
Legal battle over bump stocks
A bump stock is an attachment that replaces the standard stock on a semi-automatic rifle, the part at the rear of the gun that rests on the shooter’s shoulder. This allows the rest of the gun to move back and forth while keeping the stock in place, and includes a finger rest to keep the trigger from moving. When the gun is fired and the shooter applies forward pressure to the barrel, the rifle recoils against the stock and bounces forward again, causing the trigger to “bump” against the finger and fire the next round. This device allows the shooter to fire much faster than is possible with a standard stock.
Rick Bowmer/AP
Following the 2017 Route 91 Harvest music festival shooting, then-President Donald Trump proposed new rules to the Justice Department that would ban any device that “turns a legal weapon into a machine gun.” I instructed him to do so.
ATF had decided several times From 2008 to 2017, bump stocks were found not to be recognized as machine guns and not regulated by federal law. However, after the massacre, the gunman changed his tune and used a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock. According to the FBI, the device was capable of firing up to 1,000 rounds of ammunition in 11 minutes, and the rampage killed 58 people (two others later died) and injured about 500 more.
In that new rule, Published December 2018, The ATF determined that rifles with bump stocks qualify as machine guns, in part because when the shooter pulls the trigger, a multiple-shot firing sequence begins. The sequence is “automatic” because “the device harnesses the recoil energy of the firearm as part of a continuous reciprocating cycle, allowing the shooter to fire consecutive shots with just one pull of the trigger,” officials said. has been certified.
of Final rule from the Trump administration It went into effect in March 2019, requiring people who already had bump stocks to either destroy their devices or convert them to ATF. Violators who continue to possess bump stocks may be subject to criminal penalties.
While the rulemaking process was underway, Michael Cargill, the man at the center of the case, purchased two bump stocks in April 2018. He turned them over to the ATF after the ban was adopted and then challenged the regulations in U.S. District Court for the District of Texas.
The district court sided with the ATF, finding that the agency properly classified rifles equipped with bump stocks as machine guns. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the lower court’s decision, holding that “under the best interpretation of the statute, bump stocks qualify as machine guns.” .
However, all judges on the Fifth Circuit struck down this provision. In a 13-3 decision in January 2023, the Court of Appeals ruled that Congress must act to ban bump stocks. In part of the lead opinion written by Justice Jennifer Elrod, eight justices said bump stocks clearly fall outside the statutory definition of a machine gun. Twelve justices sided with Cargill, ruling that the definition of a machine gun was so vague that it invoked a legal principle known as the doctrine of leniency, which requires courts to interpret unclear criminal laws in the way most favorable to defendants. concluded that it was ambiguous.
Other federal appeals courts are also considering the legality of bump stock regulations. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit applied a lenient rule, siding with bump stock owner Scott Hardin, stating, “Because the relevant statutory scheme does not clearly and unequivocally prohibit bump stocks, we agree that Hardin We have no choice but to interpret the statute in favor of the . ”
But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the rule, ruling that bump stocks are illegal under federal firearms law “under the best interpretation of the statute.” It was determined that it was a machine gun. is a “self-adjusting mechanism that allows the shooter to fire multiple shots with a single pull of the trigger.”
In April 2023, the Biden administration appealed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court, arguing that semiautomatic rifles with bump stocks meet the federal definition of machine guns.
The Department of Justice maintained that the ATF’s interpretation of the machine gun definition is correct and the best it can be.
“A rifle with a bump stock, like a conventional machine gun, is a dangerous and unusual weapon,” Attorney General Elizabeth Preloger, representing the government in the High Court, said in a submission.
Mr. Preloger also asked the court to reject an interpretation of the law that would allow gun manufacturers to circumvent the ban on machine guns.
“The reverse structure adopted by the Fifth Circuit would turn Congress’ long-standing machine gun regulations into a ‘Maginot Line that can be easily circumvented by the simplest maneuvers,'” she wrote. “This incredible result further confirms what a natural interpretation of the statute’s text would suggest: that bump stock devices are machine guns.”
But Cargill’s lawyers argued that bump stocks fall outside the definition of a machine gun for two reasons. First, because a semi-automatic rifle’s trigger resets and requires the shooter to reactivate the trigger each time a weapon with a bump stock is fired, this device allows multiple It does not cause the gun to fire. Second, a bump stock does not allow the rifle to fire automatically. This is because the shooter must continuously perform manual operations after pulling the trigger.
It urged the Supreme Court to side with Cargill on the principle of leniency if it finds the language of the statute is ambiguous. Cargill’s lawyers also pointed out that Congress could have taken action to ban bump stocks on its own, but did not do so.
“What Congress enacted was a legal definition of a ‘machine gun’ that determined whether a weapon could ‘automatically’ fire multiple shots through a single function of the trigger,” they said. “Whether that definition should be updated to include weapons that achieve the effects of a machine gun ‘through different technical means’ is for Congress, not the authorities or the courts, to decide.”
The Supreme Court’s decision is expected to be handed down by the end of June.
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