Gun bump stock prohibition lifted by US Supreme Court.
In the 2017 incident in Las Vegas, which left numerous people dead at a music festival, bump stocks were employed.
The restriction on bump stocks, the fast-firing firearm modification used in the bloodiest mass shooting in US history, has been removed by the US Supreme Court.
The court ruled on Friday that the government lacked the authority to outlaw the accessories. Following the usage of bump stocks in a 2017 concert shooting in Las Vegas that claimed 60 lives, the Trump administration outlawed them. The government went too far in classifying the accessories as machine guns, which are prohibited by federal law, according to a Texas gun store owner who challenged the restriction. He carried his case all the way to the nation's highest court.
According to the court, a semi-automatic rifle that has an attachment is not a machine gun as defined by federal law. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority judgement on the Supreme Court, declaring that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms had "exceeded" its jurisdiction. Rifles with bump stocks "cannot fire more than one shot 'by a single function of the trigger,' and even if they could, they would not do so 'automatically,'" the court declared, referencing a portion of the legal definition of machine guns. Three of the nine justices—Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—dissented from the divided decision. "Today, the Court puts bump stocks back in civilian hands," stated Justice Sotomayor.
Something she stated "will have deadly consequences" in her decision. She questioned if they could be considered machine guns, saying, "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." Any "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" is classified as a machine gun under the 1986 Firearms Act. Some justices on the conservative-led court seemed suspicious of the prohibition at a hearing on the case in March, pointing out the slight technical distinctions between a machine gun and a bump-stock gun's modes of operation.
Justice Neil Gorsuch stated at the time that he could understand "why these items should be made illegal," but that Congress should be the one to do so openly. Bump stocks are just "the kinds of weapons Congress was intending to bar because of the damage they do," Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson retorted. The bump stock uses the recoil of a rifle to fire numerous bullets quickly. It permits the pistol to slide back and forth between the user's shoulder and trigger finger, replacing the stock of the weapon, which is held against the shoulder. Without requiring the user to move their finger, that action, or bump, activates the gun.
The perpetrator in the shooting incident in Las Vegas was able to fire hundreds of rounds per minute—the same rate as many machine guns—by adding bump stocks to twelve of his semi-automatic rifles. He attacked a crowd of people attending a music festival, killing 60 of them and injuring hundreds more. The BBC was informed by a representative for the campaign of Donald Trump, whose government implemented the initial ban, that "the court has spoken and their decision should be respected". A representative for President Joe Biden blasted the choice. Biden and Trump are running for reelection, and Biden is set to confront Trump in June. They declared, "Weapons of war have no place on American streets."
