Supreme Court strikes down Trump-era federal ban on bump stocks

 

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a "bump stock" attachment does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a "machine gun," which is prohibited under federal law. The 6-3 vote aligned with the conservative supermajority's previous decisions in gun cases, such as its 2022 decision to expand gun rights.

The court found that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives overstepped its authority by enacting the ban on bump stocks when it determined that the devices were classified as machine guns. Civilians now have access to bump stocks again.

In the aftermath of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that killed dozens of people, the ATF issued a rule that said rifles equipped with bump stocks should fall under the legal definition of machine guns, which have been banned since 1986.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock does not make it a fully automatic machine gun. A machine gun is defined as a weapon that can fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger,” which is not the case for rifles with bump stock attachments...more