Supreme Court to decide whether civilians can own automatic weapons

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case on February 28 that could effectively legalize civilian ownership of automatic weapons, which can fire up to nine bullets per second.

incident known as Garland vs Cargill, bump stocks, and devices that use the gun’s recoil to fire the weapon repeatedly. A bump stock causes the semi-automatic gun’s trigger to hit the shooter’s finger, causing the gun’s recoil to violently rock the gun back and forth, repeatedly “bumping” the trigger, and causing the gun to fire as if it were fully automatic.

A “semi-automatic” weapon refers to a gun that loads a bullet into the chamber or prepares to fire again after firing a bullet, but does not fire the next bullet until the shooter pulls the trigger again. In contrast, “automatic” weapons fire bullets continuously, often requiring the shooter to hold down the trigger to do so.

The Trump administration issued regulations banning bump stocks in 2018 after a gunman used them to kill 60 people and injure hundreds during a country music festival in Las Vegas. did. A 1986 law criminalized the possession of “machine guns,” and the Trump administration decided that the law also applied to bump stocks.

However, federal courts are divided on whether federal law defines the term “machine gun” broadly enough to include bump stocks, and the law appears to be fairly vague on this point.

If this lawsuit, brought by individual gun owners who wanted to own bump stocks, had happened just a few years ago, it would have been a landslide victory for the government. The Supreme Court’s decision is Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984) generally urges judges to withhold interpretations of ambiguous federal laws by federal agencies. chevron It asks the court to follow the government’s interpretation of what a “machine gun” is.

But the court is likely to reject it. chevron Two cases heard in January shifted ultimate authority over a vast number of policy issues from the executive branch of government to the courts themselves. And that means the fate of the current ban on bump stocks is likely to depend entirely on whether the five justices want such a ban to exist.

The federal ban on automatic weapons is really vague.

Under federal law, a “machine gun” includes “any weapon that fires, is designed to fire, or is capable of firing multiple shots automatically by a single function of the trigger without requiring manual reloading.” It is defined as The plaintiff is cargill We make two separate arguments that this definition does not apply to bump stocks.

One of these arguments is quite plausible, the other is not.

Starting with the plaintiff’s weak argument, the plaintiff’s attorney argues that a gun with a bump stock does not fire “automatically.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a far-right court that routinely issues questionable decisions that advance conservative policy goals, agrees with this argument, stating that the bump stocks at issue in this case are They concluded that automatic fire is not acceptable because it only functions. If the shooter maintains “manual forward pressure on the barrel and manual rearward pressure on the trigger ledge.”

The problem with this argument is that there are too many proofs. Virtually all automatic weapons do not qualify as “machine guns” if the gun cannot be an automatic weapon if the shooter is required to maintain continuous pressure on any part of the gun.

As the Justice Department explained in its brief to the judge, most conventional machine guns “fire only by a constant rearward pressure on the trigger,” meaning the shooter must continue to press the trigger. Otherwise, the gun will stop firing. As the Justice Department argues, there is “no meaningful difference” between weapons that require a continuous press on the trigger and weapons that require a continuous press on any other part of the gun. Both types of guns should be considered automatic weapons because they continue firing until the shooter stops firing.

of cargill The plaintiffs’ stronger argument, on the other hand, invalidates the federal law requirement that machine guns fire automatically “by the single function of the trigger.” Federal judges are highly divided on how to read this provision, and it appears to be quite ambiguous.

Some courts, such as the left-leaning D.C. Circuit, have held that this reference to a “single function of the trigger” should be interpreted to mean “a single pull of the trigger from the point of view of the shooter.” I concluded. Therefore, as that court stated, Geddes vs. ATF (2019), semi-automatic rifles with bump stocks count as machine guns. The reason is that “the shooter only pulls the trigger once with her index finger, and that action creates a continuous flow of bumps through the operation of the stock” without her moving her finger. The fire won’t go out unless you move it. ”

Alternatively, a majority of the Fifth Circuit concluded that guns with bump stocks do not count as machine guns because the trigger itself moves back and forth while firing. Although these judges acknowledged that bump stocks allow semiautomatic rifles to fire rapidly, they argued that “the fact remains that only one bullet is fired each time the shooter pulls the trigger.” did.

So how should the Supreme Court resolve this ambiguity?

Both sides in the case can point to competing rules governing how the statute should be interpreted to support their desired outcome.

Many judges who have ruled against bump stock bans have pointed to something called the “leniency rule” to justify their decisions. In general, this rule provides that when criminal law is ambiguous, it should be interpreted in favor of the defendant. As the Supreme Court stated: Lewis vs. United States (1971), “Ambiguity regarding the scope of criminal law should be resolved in favor of leniency.”

But the leniency rule is also a very weak nail for making legal decisions. it is, Barber vs. Thomas (2010), the Supreme Court held that “the rule of leniency is based on a review of the language, structure, history, and purpose of the court simply stating that there is a significant ambiguity or uncertainty in the statute that the court must infer.” It concluded that this applies only when “sexuality” remains. About what Congress intended. ”

Meanwhile, the Justice Department points to a rule known as the “presumption of invalidity” to justify maintaining the bump stock ban. This rule generally provides that statutes should not be construed in a manner that aids in “evasion of the law.”

This is also a very old rule. The Justice Department’s brief cites a 200-year-old Supreme Court decision known as . emily and caroline (1824) warns against reading the law in such a way as to “make it ineffective in a significant sense and enable criminals to escape its provisions in the simplest way.” (“Invalid” means that the law does not or cannot operate.)

“When interpreting laws and regulations, penalties must also be included,” the court explained as follows. emily“We must keep our eyes on the object in view, and never adopt an interpretation that defeats its own purpose, even if other reasonable interpretations are acceptable.” Therefore, if a law can fairly be interpreted in more than one way, courts should avoid interpreting the law in a way that invalidates it.

Furthermore, although the highly conservative Supreme Court tends to be sympathetic to gun rights plaintiffs’ claims, a majority of the justices hold that the law should not be interpreted to invalidate it. There is also recent evidence that he may be sympathetic to the ministry’s arguments. .

Last August, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that allowed the sale of “ghost guns,” firearms that are sold disassembled to circumvent certain federal gun regulations.

Federal law typically requires gun buyers to submit a background check and also requires guns to have serial numbers so they can be traced if used in a crime. These requirements apply to “any weapon that fires, or is designed to fire, or may be readily converted to fire a projectile by the action of an explosive” . To prevent gun dealers from circumventing this law by selling disassembled firearms as individual parts, the same federal law requires that the “frame or receiver of such weapon,” i.e., the gun barrel or other parts such as the gun barrel, It also applies to the skeletal parts of firearms that house them. trigger mechanism.

Ghost guns try to get around these requirements because they are sold disassembled and with frames and receivers incomplete, but often with minimal work, such as drilling a single hole in the frame. It will be completed.

In any case, the majority of the judges held as follows: Garland v. Vanderstockto block a lower court ruling that allowed these ghost guns to be sold without background checks or serial numbers. vanderstoke The ruling was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett crossing to vote along with three court-appointed Democrats.

So this is at least part of the evidence that this court will apply a presumption of invalidity to gun regulations like the one at issue in the following cases. cargill.

In any case, the bump stock case confirms a truly ambiguous provision of federal law. In other words, in a world where there is nothing, chevronthe question of whether gun manufacturers can sell devices that circumvent the machine gun ban will depend on which outcome a majority of judges prefer.