On Friday, the Supreme Court again curtailed the government's power to protect Americans from gun violence. In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, the justices struck down regulations adopted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives banning bump stocks, devices that turn semi-automatic rifles into machine guns. While the case concerned the interpretation of federal law and not the Second Amendment, it once again showed that the court's conservative majority will protect gun rights and put people's lives at unnecessary risk.
Federal law enacted in 1934 prohibits the possession of machine guns. Congress passed the law because machine guns fire large numbers of bullets rapidly, with the potential to cause great harm. The law defines a machine gun as a firearm that “fires multiple bullets automatically, without manual reloading, by a single pull of the trigger.” In contrast, a semi-automatic weapon requires the shooter to release and re-pull the trigger to fire multiple bullets.
But with a bump stock, a semi-automatic rifle can repeatedly fire at nearly the same rate as a machine gun. A rifle equipped with a bump stock can fire at a rate of 400 to 800 rounds per minute.
In 2017, a gunman opened fire on crowds at a music festival in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and injuring over 500. The gunman's weapon was equipped with a bump stock.
Following the Las Vegas tragedy, the ATF changed its position and now considers bump stocks to be prohibited by the law banning machine guns. It is worth noting that this new rule was adopted by the conservative Trump Administration, and even the National Rifle Association agreed with the need for regulation. The rule ordered owners of bump stocks to destroy or surrender their stocks within 90 days.
The ATF's new rule makes a lot of sense. Weapons equipped with bump stocks are, in effect, machine guns. Common sense tells us they should fall under the federal ban. “If I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissent on Friday.
Unfortunately, the Court, in a majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, found that the slight differences between bump-stocked weapons and machine guns meant that the ATF lacked the authority to adopt its rules. “A semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock does not fire more than one shot per one function of the trigger,” he wrote. “All that a bump stock does is accelerate the rate of fire by triggering these different functions.”[s] There could be a cascade of triggers.”
Not only did the Court ignore common sense, it also ignored the principle that deference should be given to federal agencies such as the ATF when interpreting federal law, and it also failed to follow the principle that laws should be interpreted to accomplish their purpose.
Both Thomas' majority opinion and Sotomayor's dissenting opinion contain detailed explanations of how bump stocks work. They both agree that bump stocks enable semi-automatic rifles to function as machine guns, and there's no doubt about that, but they work slightly (very slightly) differently. And there's no denying that such weapons can kill large numbers of people in a short amount of time.
Why would six Supreme Court justices deny the federal government the power to interpret federal law to ban bump stocks? The only explanation is that an ultra-conservative majority supports gun rights almost unquestioningly, and they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the enormous cost of gun violence in America.
Because this case does not involve the Second Amendment, Congress could pass legislation banning bump stocks. The gun lobby has blocked this so far. We can only hope that a tragedy like the one in Las Vegas doesn't happen again before Congress bans a device that serves no purpose other than effectively turning a rifle into a machine gun.
Erwin Chemerinsky is an Opinion contributor and dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
