Supreme Court set to review bump stock ban

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court will hear from the Biden administration next week as it attempts to defend the government’s response to the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. 

A gunman fired over a thousand shots into an outdoor concert in Las Vegas in 2017 with the help of bump stocks. The add-on devices allowed him to fire approximately nine rounds per second, killing 58 people and wounding 500 more. 

Since the shooting, the government has tried to ban the devices, leading to the court battle that’s now before the justices. The case is another chapter in the country’s almost centurylong effort to ban machine guns.  

In 1934, Congress passed the National Firearms Act after a string of high-profile shootings. Lawmakers wanted to target gangsters who had used machine guns to rob banks, ambush policemen, and murder rivals. The law required the registration of machine guns and taxed any ownership transfers. 

Three decades later, lawmakers amended machine gun regulations to address the increase in gun use in violent crimes. The 1968 Gun Control Act revamped registration requirements and added strong criminal penalties for violations. 

The rapid popularity of machine guns led Congress to pause the sale and transfer of the devices in 1986. Under the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, individuals who already lawfully owned a machine gun were allowed to retain their weapons but anyone else was blocked from obtaining the firearms. 

Gun manufacturers found a loophole in the law, producing semiautomatic weapons. Similar to machine guns, these firearms load bullets into the chamber automatically. Unlike machine guns, shooters have to manually pull the trigger to fire the second bullet. 

Congress banned semiautomatic weapons in 1994, but the ban expired. Since 2004, gunmakers have been designing firearm add-ons to allow semiautomatic weapons to replicate automatic fire. 

Bump stocks are one of these modifications. The device replaces the end of a rifle, sliding back and forth to trigger the firing sequence. This allows the firearm to discharge hundreds of rounds per minute. The government estimates that bump stocks can fire between 400 and 800 bullets per minute — a rate comparable to a military machine gun. 

Akins Accelerator asked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to classify its bump stock device. Akins used an internal spring to shift the rifle back and forth, enabling continuous fire. 

The bureau initially declined to classify Akins bump stock as a machine gun. The law defines machine guns as weapons that shoot more than one shot by a single function of the trigger. The agency understood one pull of the trigger to mean one movement. 

In 2006, however, the agency reversed, reclassifying Akins bump stock as a machine gun. The agency reinterpreted what a single pull of the trigger meant, finding that Akins' device used a continuous pull. 

When the bureau reclassified Akins bump stock as a machine gun, it also said that without the internal spring, the device would no longer be classified under that definition. 

Gun manufacturers took the government's advice and began developing bump stocks that used constant forward pressure on the barrel to side the rifle back and forth. 

Following the Las Vegas shooting in 2017, ATF reclassified bump stocks as machine guns, banning the devices. 

Michael Cargill was forced to surrender his bump stocks after the government updated its rule. He sued, claiming ATF did not have the authority to ban bump stocks. Cargill lost his bench trial and an appeals court unanimously affirmed. 

Cargill asked the entire appeals court to rehear his case, and the Fifth Circuit reversed. The government asked the Supreme Court to intervene. 

The government claims Congress had defined machine guns as weapons that shoot automatically without manual reloading. Under that definition, the government argues bump stocks should be banned and urged the court to reject a reading of the law that would circumvent Congress’ intention. 

“This court has long recognized that courts should avoid reading statutes in a manner that permits ready evasion of their provisions,” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in the government’s brief. “The decision below invites such evasion. Congress has banned new machine guns because machine guns facilitate rapid fire by eliminating the manual movements that shooters must otherwise repeat in order to fire repeated shots.” 

Cargill claims that bump stocks should not be considered machine guns because they require the trigger to be reactivated by the shooter between every shot. 

“A bump stock accelerates firing by causing repeated ‘functions’ of the trigger to occur in rapid succession; it does not produce multiple shots in response to a ‘single function’ of the trigger,” Jonathan Mitchell, an attorney with Mitchell Law representing Cargill, wrote in his brief before the court. 

Cargill argues that even if bump stocks allowed a semiautomatic rifle to fire more than one shot with one pull of the trigger, that function does not happen automatically. 

The case will be argued Feb. 28. 

Follow @KelseyReichmann

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