Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case Challenging Ban on Iconic Firearm Attachment
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case challenging the federal ban on bump stocks.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ rule earlier this year in Garland v. Cargill.
The Supreme Court granted the government’s appeal of the ruling in a brief order.
The ATF’s bump stock rule was proposed by the Trump administration in the aftermath of the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert, which killed 58 people and wounded over 500.
“In defining the term machinegun, Congress referred to the mechanism by which the gun’s trigger causes bullets to be fired,” the 5th Circuit majority found in January.
“Policy judgments aside, we are bound to apply that mechanical definition,” it said. “And applying that definition to a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a non-mechanical bump stock, we conclude that such a weapon is not a machinegun for purposes of the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act.”
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals also struck down the rule in a separate case in April.
LEGAL ALERT: The Supreme Court has granted the cert petitions in a lawsuit challenging the federal bump stock ban and a First Amendment lawsuit involving the NRA’s speech. pic.twitter.com/lURyAGDFqL
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) November 3, 2023
The Supreme Court previously declined to block the rule in 2019 and rejected two appeals by gun owners seeking to reverse it in 2022.
The appeals court rulings this year striking down the rule created a circuit split.
Robert Leider, an assistant law professor at George Mason University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in October that the case centered on the intersection of administrative and criminal law rather than the Second Amendment.
“So the question at bottom is whether the agency can resolve the ambiguity in a way that expands the scope of the statute or in a way that is favorable to the government in a criminal prosecution and whether courts have to confirm it,” Leider said.
The Supreme Court is slated to hear another case on Tuesday that challenges the federal law prohibiting individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms.
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