WASHINGTON — In a loss for the Biden administration, the Supreme Court ruled Friday that a federal ban on bump stocks, gun accessories that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire faster, is unlawful.
In a 6-3 ruling on ideological grounds, with the court’s conservatives in the majority, the court ruled that a nearly 100-year-old law aimed at banning machine guns cannot legitimately be interpreted as bump stocks.
Writing for the majority, Judge Clarence Thomas said that a firearm equipped with this accessory does not meet the definition of “machine gun” under federal law.
The ruling sparked a strong backlash from liberals Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
“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,” she wrote, referring to the bursts that allow semi-automatic rifles to operate like machine guns. Sotomayor also took the rare step of reading a summary of her dissent in court.
Even with the federal ban out of the picture, bump stocks still won’t be available nationwide. More than a dozen states have already banned them, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit gun control group. Congress could also act.
In a statement, President Joe Biden said he had “used every tool in my administration to eradicate gun violence” and vowed to continue doing so.
“We know thoughts and prayers are not enough,” Biden said. “I am calling on Congress to ban the stockpile, pass an assault weapons ban and take additional action to save lives – send me a bill and I will sign it immediately.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reiterated the point in a statement, saying “the only way to permanently close this loophole is through legislation.”
Gun control advocates denounced the ruling and expressed concern that some of the state law bans could also be struck down.
“We have seen bump stocks cause enormous destruction and violence,” said Esther Sanchez-Gomez, litigation director at the Giffords Law Center. “The majority of justices today sided with the gun lobby over the safety of the American people. This is a shameful decision.”
The Trump administration imposed the ban after the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, in which Stephen Paddock used bump stock-equipped firearms to open fire at a country music festival, initially killing 58 people. Then-President Donald Trump personally called for a ban on the accessory.
The National Rifle Association, a leading gun rights group, indicated at the time that it also supported a ban, but later backtracked. The group welcomed Friday’s ruling, saying on
Sotomayor mentioned the Las Vegas shooting in her dissent.
“All he had to do was pull the trigger and push the gun forward. The bump stock did the rest,” she wrote.
The ruling, she added, “hampers the government’s efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.”
In a concurring opinion, conservative Justice Samuel Alito conceded that a weapon equipped with a bump stock is very similar to a machine gun in practical terms and said Congress could take action to ban the accessory.
The “terrible shooting” in Las Vegas showed how “a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock can have the same deadly effect as a machine gun,” strengthening the case for legislative action, he added.
The Supreme Court declined to block the ordinance in 2019. The already conservative court has since tilted further to the right, with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, replacing liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020.
Conservatives now have a six-to-three majority who have supported gun rights in previous cases.
The National Firearms Act was enacted in 1934 to regulate machine guns in response to prohibition-era gangster violence.
The lawsuit was filed by Texas-based gun owner Michael Cargill, a licensed dealer who owned two bump stocks before the ban took effect and later turned them over to the government.
“More than five years ago, I swore to defend the Constitution of the United States even though I was the only plaintiff in the case. That’s exactly what I did,” he said in a statement responding to the ruling.
Bump stocks use the recoil energy of a trigger to allow the user to fire hundreds of rounds with what the federal government calls “a single motion.”
Cargill’s lawyers say it’s a difficult skill to master.
Some gun rights advocates, including the National Rifle Association, initially supported then-President Donald Trump’s move to regulate bump stocks after the Las Vegas shooting, but have opposed it.
The case does not implicate the scope of the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The challengers argue that the government does not have the authority to ban bump stocks under the 1934 law.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 defined “machine gun” as accessories “for use in converting a weapon” into a machine gun, and the ATF concluded that bump stocks meet that definition.
Much of the legal battle revolved around the definition of a machine gun as a weapon that can automatically fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”
The government argued that the phrase refers to the shooter’s actions, requiring a single action to fire multiple shots. Cargill’s attorneys argued that it refers to the action in the firearm when the trigger is pulled. Because a bump stock still requires the trigger to be activated with each shot, it is not a machine gun, they reasoned.
The Supreme Court embraced Cargill’s argument, with Thomas writing that a firearm equipped with a bump stock does not become a machine gun because “it cannot fire more than one shot” with a single function of the trigger.
“ATF therefore exceeded its legal authority by issuing a rule classifying bump stocks as machine guns,” he added.
Lower courts were divided on the issue, with both the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit ruling that the ban was unlawful.
The Biden administration appealed both cases, while gun rights advocates challenged the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that upheld the ban.
The Supreme Court has supported gun rights in cases that directly address the scope of the Second Amendment, including the 2022 ruling that established the right to carry a gun outside the home.
But in a case argued in November, the court indicated it might strike down some longstanding gun laws in a case involving a ban on firearm ownership by people accused of domestic violence.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
