The US Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a national ban on “bump investment” devices, similar to machine guns, is immoral, and it also rejected a second firearms ban.
In a 6 to 3 decision authored by traditional Justice Clarence Thomas, the justices upheld a lower court’s decision in favor of Texas-based gun rights activist and owner of a gun store who had sued the restrictions by claiming that a US company had misinterpreted a US law that forbids the use of knock stocks. The liberal judges were in the lot, with the liberal judges dissenting.
Following the use of the products during a 2017 large shooting that left 58 people dead at a Las Vegas country music festival, the law was passed by Trump’s presidency in 2019. The plan was defended in jury by Democrat Prez Biden’s management.
In this case, the question is whether a knock stock, a semiautomatic weapons accessory that makes the shooter able to quickly reconnect the trigger and achieve a higher rate of fire, transforms the rifle into a “machinegun.” We hold that it does not and thus affirm the lower prosecutor’s ruling”, Thomas wrote.
Federal officials claimed the law was necessary to safeguard public health in the US, a country that continues to be plagued by gun violence. Bump companies use a semiautomatic’s shrink to allow it to roll back and forth while “bumping” the gunman’s set hand, resulting in quick fire.
We come to the conclusion that a semiautomatic rifle with a nudge inventory is not a “machinegun” because it does n’t fire more than one shot” by a single button action.”
In a dissent, progressive Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote,” Now, the courtroom puts knock stocks back in human hands. In order to do so, it leaves out Congress ‘ definition of “machinegun” and picks up one that is inconsistent with the legal text’s general significance and unsupported by framework or goal. When I notice a parrot that walks like a bird, swims like a bird, and quacks like a bird, I refer to it as a bird. A knock- stock- equipped automatic rifle fires’ quickly more than one shot, without human reloading, by a second function of the trigger.’ Because I, like Congress, call that a machinegun, I respectfully dissent”. The sale or possession of a machine gun is a crime punishable by ten years in prison in federal law.
The bump stocks case centered on how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ( ATF), a U. S. Justice Department agency, interpreted the National Firearms Act, which defined machine guns as weapons that can “automatically” fire more than one shot” by a single function of the trigger”.
The Trump administration acted after a gunman used bump stocks to carry out the shooting spree in Las Vegas, which resulted in the deaths of 58 people and injured hundreds more. The ATF reversed the agency’s previous position and decided that bump stocks were subject to the National Firearms Act.
The Supreme Court, with its 6- 3 conservative minority, has taken an expansive view of gun rights, striking down gun restrictions in major cases in 2008, 2010 and in 2022. In that 2022 decision, the state of New York relaxed its ban on concealed weapons inside homes and established a strict new bar for determining gun laws ‘ legality. Unlike those three cases, this challenge was not centered on the U. S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
In a concurring opinion on Friday, conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote,” The statutory text or its meaning were not altered by the horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017. The case for amending ( existing law ) was strengthened by the demonstration that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun. However, Alito said,” A law that requires amendments does not necessarily alter the law’s meaning.”
