SCOTUS To Decide If Bump Stocks Are Machine Guns

On February 28, 2024, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in United States v. Cargill on the question of whether bump stocks can be categorized as machine guns under a rule issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The National Firearms Act defined a machine gun is “[a]ny weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

Following the killing or 60 people and wounding of at least 411 more at the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Festival in 2017 by a gunman who used 14 rifles outfitted with bump stocks, the ATF reconsidered whether bump stocks should be considered machine guns.

The ATF concluded that a bump stock allows a shooter to continuously fire a weapon “with a single pull of the trigger”, rendering it a machine gun and prohibited the sale, manufacture and possession of bump stocks.

Several challenges were made in federal court to the ATF’s rule making. Two federal appellate courts upheld the ban, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (covering Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi) struck it down in Cargill.

Cargill lawfully purchased two bump stocks in April 2018 prior to the ban. He surrenders them once the ATF banned them. That same day he filed a lawsuit challenging the rule in federal court in Texas.

The District Court and three judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ban. In rehearing by the entire Fifth Circuit bench, the ban was struck down.

The Solicitor General has asserted that if the Supreme Court affirms the Fifth Circuit decision “manufacturers within the Fifth Circuit will be able to make and sell bump stocks to individuals without background checks and without registering or serializing the devices.”

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