Debates over guns are commonplace from kitchen tables to Capitol Hill. Mass shootings being a facet of American life necessitates finding a balance between protecting citizens and their 2nd Amendment rights. This particularly applies in deciding whether the 2nd Amendment gives carte blanche rights to own any firearm, or if the government can prevent private citizens from owning “weapons of war,” such as machine guns. The Supreme Court opinion in Garland v. Cargill, delivered on June 14th by Justice Clarence Thomas, marked a new development in this debate. The Court held a bump stock doesn’t convert a semi-automatic rifle to a machine gun. In response, President Joe Biden said, “Americans should not have to live in fear of this mass devastation.”

Bump stocks are firearm modifications that are used to replace the back of a semi-automatic rifle so that when the gun is held against the shoulder it can slide back and forth. Without a bump stock attached, a semi-automatic gun discharges one bullet each time the trigger is pressed. Bump stocks allow a shooter to keep their trigger finger in place and use the energy released from the recoil to rapidly and continuously fire the rifle. When modified with a bump stock, a semi-automatic gun is capable of firing 400-800 rounds a minute. This is compared to approximately 60 rounds a minute without the bump stock attached. Furthermore, fully automatic weapons, which civilians are prohibited from owning or using, can fire between 700 and 950 rounds a minute. 

The National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) outlines the statutory definitions of different firearms and denotes which are permitted for civilian ownership under the 2nd Amendment. Garland focuses on the statute’s definition of a machine gun. 26 U.S. Code § 5845 defines a machine gun as any weapon that can automatically fire multiple rounds using only a single function of the trigger. It is illegal for civilians to own or use any weapon that on its own, or due to some modification or conversion, can initiate a continuous firing cycle from a single pull of the trigger. 

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is the government agency that regulates firearms and is therefore in charge of ensuring compliance with the NFA. In 2009, the ATF under President Obama approved the manufacture and sale of bump stocks. Over 700,000 bump stocks were sold between the 2009 measure and the ATF’s 2018 ban. 

On October 1, 2017, the US saw its deadliest mass shooting when Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and left over 850 wounded on the Las Vegas Strip. The shooting itself lasted only 9 minutes. When law enforcement breached the room where Paddock conducted the shooting, it was littered with over a thousand shell casings and an arsenal of weapons, including 12 rifles modified with bump stocks. In response, many people, including those present during the massacre, called for banning bump stocks as they allowed for shooting’s scale and speed. “We were running over bodies because of how quickly the shots were being fired,” said Marisa Marano, a survivor of the shooting. “Had it been one rifle, I do not believe that as many people would have died.”

Within a week of the incident, the National Rifle Association (NRA) released a statement calling on the ATF to “immediately review” if bump stocks comply with federal law. The NRA, historically opposed to any new gun controls, supported bump stock regulation, but not an outright ban. NRA Chief Lobbyist Chris Cox said “We don’t believe that bans have ever worked on anything. What we have said has been very clear – that if something transfers a semiautomatic to function like a fully automatic, then it ought to be regulated differently.” Some gun-control advocates praised the NRA for its flexibility. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said, “This is the first time that the gun lobby has shown willingness to come to the table and I think that’s in part because Americans just simply do not accept mass shootings after mass shootings”. 

Some Congressional Republicans supported these policy implications of the Las Vegas shooting. Paul Ryan opined that he “didn’t know what a bump stock was until th[at] week… fully automatic weapons have been outlawed for many, many years. This seems to be a way of going around that, so obviously we need to look how we can tighten up the compliance with this law so that fully automatic weapons are banned.” But others disagreed, with Mitch McConnell calling it “completely inappropriate to politicize an event like this.” In the end, Republicans prevented Congress from passing any legislation. 

However, Congressional inaction was not the final word on bump stocks. On December 18, 2018, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker announced that the Department of Justice (DOJ) amended ATF regulations to clarify that bump stocks fall within the statutory definition of a machine gun. The final rule went into effect on March 26, 2019, explaining that under the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) and the NFA, bump stocks are machine guns since semi-automatic rifles with bump stocks can fire multiple rounds from only a single pull of the trigger. This followed President Trump’s February 20, 2018 memorandum instructing the DOJ to ban “all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns.”

Michael Cargill owns a gun store in Texas. He had bought two bump stocks in 2018 which he turned over to the government after the 2019 provision went into effect. Cargill then sued, claiming the ATF exceeded its statutory authority since the ability to regulate bump stocks belongs to Congress as part of the Legislative Branch rather than the ATF as part of the Executive Branch.

The case reached the Supreme Court which held that “a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’ And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically.’” Garland focussed on the legality of non-mechanical bump stocks, which rely on pressure from the non-trigger hand to force the rifle and trigger forward after recoil. Because of this reliance on the shooter’s other hand to move the bump stock, it was ruled mechanical bump stocks do not meet the definition of a machine gun under the NFA.

The court also ruled the ATF exceeded its statutory authority. As Thomas notes in his opinion, even supporters of banning bump stocks, such as the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, have said ATF lacked the statutory authority to implement such a ban. In Justice Alito’s concurrence, he reiterated that Congress does have the power to amend the law to ban bump stocks if they so choose, however, that decision does not rest with the ATF.

Reading her dissent from the bench, Justice Sotomayor highlighted the life-or-death consequences of this decision. She argued that “Congress’s definition of ‘machinegun’ encompasses bump stocks just as naturally as M16s. Just like a person can shoot ‘automatically more than one shot’ with an M16 through a ‘single function of the trigger’ if he maintains continuous backward pressure on the trigger, he can do the same with a bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle if he maintains forward pressure on the gun… Today’s decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences.”

Reiterating the deep political divide over this issue, many Republicans celebrated the court’s decision. Despite the original ban occurring under Trump, many of his supporters still disagreed with it including Rep. Matt Gaetz who told CNN the decision in Garland “vindicates the rights of gun owners…I think there was a lot of misinformation about bump stocks.

I think responsible gun ownership enhances safety.” In response to the ruling, Jeremiah Cottle, the inventor of bump stocks, said, “I think we have a violence problem in this country. I don’t think we have a gun problem… to blame it on an inanimate object is irresponsible.” Others abjectly disagree with Cottle’s analysis. Craig Link, whose brother Victor died as a result of being shot in the Las Vegas massacre said, “I’m pro-gun, but I don’t believe anyone should have an automatic weapon in a civilized world. It’s a bomb waiting to go off.”

Following the June 14th ruling, Congress quickly moved to try and pass legislation banning bump stocks, however, Senate Republicans, unsurprisingly, blocked it. Whereas Democrats focused on the lethal nature of modifications, with Senator Michael Heinrich describing them as “tailor-made for…mass shooting[s].” Senate Republicans, on the other hand, had filed a brief urging the court to rule in Cargill’s favor. 

While the Court’s ruling did little to affect the state of the gun debates in America, it left everyone less safe by deferring the question of bump stocks to a Republican-held Congress vehemently opposed to what many see as common sense legislation.

Suggestions for Further Learning:

1. A Killer on Floor 32 | ABC News
2. What Is a Bump Stock and How Does It Work? | NYTimes
3. What makes gun bump stocks so deadly | Axios
4. US Gun Policy: Global Comparisons | Council on Foreign Relations
5. Supreme Court Ruling on Bump Stocks Could Open Door to More Lethal Weapons | NYTimes 
6. Key Facts about Americans and Guns | Pew Research Center
7. Where does US gun control go from here? | BBC 
8. Bump Stocks  | Giffords
9. Bump Stocks and the Second Amendment | Duke Center for Firearms Law  
10. Bump Stocks Threaten Public Safety and National Security | Lawfare