“The Supreme Court ruled on June 14 that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) exceeded its authority,” reports Sam Dorman in The Epoch Times, “when it interpreted a federal firearms statute to outlaw the use of bump stocks.”
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the case, Garland v. Cargill. “We conclude that semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it does not fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger,’” Justice Thomas explained.
The vote was 6 – 3, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a dissent joined by the other two liberal justices. Her dissent suggested that bump stocks effectively make semiautomatic weapons into machine guns.
A bump stock is a firearm accessory that allows users to shoot at a continuous rate, resulting in hundreds of rounds fired per minute.
“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,” she said.
Sam Dorman, “Supreme Court Strikes Down Bump Stock Ban,” The Epoch Times (June 14 and 15, 2024).
The core argumentation in the case did not focus on the Second Amendment, which says that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Instead, much back and forth tried to convince, as Dorman explains, “the justices that the phrases ‘automatically’ and ‘single function of the trigger’ within federal law (The National Firearms Act) either did or didn’t apply to bump stocks.”
As such, Garland v. Cargill is a constitutionally murky case.
Of course, most reactions depended not on the constitutional rectitude but on the outcome.
A statement from President Biden called for Congress to “ban bump stocks, pass an assault weapon ban, and take additional action to save lives — [s]end me a bill and I will sign it immediately.”
By contrast, Rep. Thomas Massie (R‑Ky.) responded by suggesting the decision restored the proper separation of powers between the executive and Congress.
“In our Constitutional republic, Congress makes the laws, not the administrative branch,” he wrote on X. “The Supreme Court just acknowledged this in a 6 to 3 decision invalidating Trump’s bump-stock ban.”
Sam Dorman, Ibid.
Though bump stock add-ons to rifles are now legal in these United States, the issue remains contentious: there’s been a Supreme Court decision, but the people and the politicians aren’t decided.
1 reply on “Bumped?”
Four philosophies seem to dominate the arguments of the Justices across various cases.
The first is that the law — including the Constitution — should be interpretted based upon what its words would have meant to an educated person at the time of passage.
The second is that the law should be interpretted based upon the intent of … uhm, er, the authors? the Congressional majority? … well, gosh! That’s a mess! And it get’s messier if the law is the Constitution, as ratifying state legislatures are involved!
The third is that the law should be interprettes based upon meta-intent, which would tell us what those mysterious somebodies would have been trying to say if only they’d seen the picture more fully. Of course, this philosophy is a still greater mess.
And the fourth philosophy is that the law is no more or less than what the wisest of the Justices would freely make it. Ostensibly, he wisest Justices recognize themselves as such.
The majority in this case of bump-stocks has adopted the first philosophy. The minority is trying to invoke the third philosophy, though one always suspects them of really subscribing, à la Ginsburg, to the fourth philosophy.