In another giant blow to gross executive overreach, the U.S. Supreme court earlier this morning struck down the bump stock ban instituted by the Department of Justice under the Trump Administration.
The vote on the matter was 6-to-3 in determining that the federal government was wrong to classify bump stocks as “machine guns.”
In his opinion for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote what most people who understand and are familiar with firearms have been thinking all along.
“Semi-automatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machine guns,” Justice Thomas wrote. “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 ‘machine gun.’ We hold that it does not.
“A bump stock does not convert a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does.”
Thomas further wrote: “We hold that a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machine gun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’ And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically. ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns.”
The case, Garland v. Cargill, revolved around the bump stock ban instituted by the DOJ and ATF after a horrible mass murder in Las Vegas in 2017. While instituted by the Trump Administration, the Biden Administration has been defending the ban in court.
Writing for the liberal minority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized the majority justices for a decision that she said would lead to “deadly consequences.”
“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. “A bump-stock-equipped semi-automatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.’ Because I, like Congress, call that a machine gun, I respectfully dissent.”
Justice Sotomayor was joined on the minority by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Along with Justice Thomas, other justices voting with the majority included John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
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