The Supreme Court decided on Friday that the federal ban on so-called bump stocksthe gun accessories that allow semi-automatic rifles to shoot faster.
The six-to-three ruling is seen as a defeat for Joe Biden’s government. This time, the court’s conservative majority defined the ruling, arguing that a nearly 100-year-old law banning machine guns cannot be interpreted to include bump stocks.
In presenting the majority’s arguments, Justice Clarence Thomas said that a firearm equipped with this accessory does not meet the definition of a “machine gun” under federal law.
Outside the Supreme Court in Washington, protesters held signs against some of the justices.
Origins of the norm
The rule was imposed in 2019 by the Trump administration after this type of device was used during a 2017 mass shooting that killed 58 people at a Las Vegas country music festival. The policy was defended in court by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.
“This case asks whether a bump stock – an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to quickly re-pull the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire) – turns the rifle into a ‘machine gun’. We hold that this is not the case and therefore affirm” the lower court’s ruling, Thomas wrote.
Federal officials have said the rule was necessary to protect public safety in the United States, a nation facing persistent gun violence.
Bump stocks use the recoil of a semi-automatic rifle to allow it to slide back and forth while “bumping” the shooter’s finger on the trigger, resulting in a rapid shot.
“We conclude that a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock “It is not a ‘machine gun’ because it does not fire more than one shot ‘with a single function of the trigger,'” Thomas said.
Counter argument
Liberal judge Sonia Sotomayor argued in rejection of the ruling: “Today, the court sets the bump stocks back into the hands of civilians. To do so, he sets aside Congress’ definition of ‘machine gun’ and clings to one that is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the statutory text and is not supported by context or purpose.”
“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. A semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, with a single trigger function’. Since I, like Congress, call it a machine gun, I respectfully disagree,” Sotomayor said.
Federal law prohibits the sale or possession of machine guns, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The bump stocks case focused on how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), an agency of the United States Department of Justice, interpreted the National Firearms Act, which defined machine guns as weapons that can “automatically” fire more than one shot “with a single trigger pull.”
[Contiene reportes de Reuters y The Associated Press]
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