The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed prepared to uphold a Trump-era regulation that would outlaw 'bump stocks' that work like machine guns and allow a shooter to spray hundreds of bullets per minute. The justices, both conservative and liberal, said Congress had intended to forbid rapid-fire rifles as especially dangerous.
Since 1934, Congress has restricted machine guns, which were defined as 'any weapon which shoots...automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.' Prior to 2017, ATF said bump stock devices were not machine guns because the shooter had to press forward on the barrel as the recoil bumped or triggered another shot. But after Trump's order, ATF changed its position.