The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on bump stocks Friday, declaring that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority when it
In a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “the Congress that enacted” the law at issue here “would not have seen any material difference between a machinegun and a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bumpstock. But the statutory text is clear, and we must follow it.” He added that Congress could — if it wanted — amend the law.
President Trump ordered the ATF to ban the sale and possession of bump stocks in 2018 after a single gunman in Las Vegas, using multiple guns modified by bump stocks, killed 60 people and wounded 400 more — all in the space of 11 minutes. Machine guns have been illegal in the U.S. since 1934, almost a century, and Congress has twice amended the National Firearms Act to say that machine gun parts themselves count as machine guns.