The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era ban on “bump stocks,” simple devices that can allow automatic fire from otherwise semi-automatic guns.
Mandel Ngan/AFP
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Mandel Ngan/AFP
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on bump stocks Friday, declaring that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority when it banned the devices on grounds they convert otherwise legal semi-automatic weapons into illegal machine guns. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s liberals in angry dissent.
President Trump ordered the ATF to ban the sale and possession of bump stocks in 2018 after a single gunman in Las Vegas, using multiple guns modified by bump stocks, killed 60 people and wounded 400 more—all in the space of 11 minutes. Machine guns have been illegal in the U.S. since 1934, almost a century, and Congress has twice amended the National Firearms Act to say that machine gun parts themselves count as machine guns. But on Friday, the Supreme Court ruled the ban on bump stocks went too far.
Writing for the Majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the ATF had long interpreted federal law to permit bump stocks, and only changed its mind after Trump issued his order.
Writing for the dissenters, Justice Sotomayor accused the conservative majority of once again turning a blind eye to the reality of gun violence, and making it yet more difficult to adopt measures aimed at preventing bloodshed.