The Supreme Court ruled Friday that a rifle fitted with a rapid-fire accessory known as a bump stock is not an illegal machine gun. FILE - A bump stock is displayed in Harrisonburg, Va., on March 15, 2019. The Supreme Court has struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a gun accessory that allows semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the ATF reconsidered whether bump stocks could be sold and owned legally. With support from Trump, a Republican, the agency in 2018 ordered a ban on the devices, arguing they turned rifles into illegal machine guns.written by Justice Clarence Thomas said the ATF did not have the authority to issue the regulation banning bump stocks.
The court’s three liberal justices opposed the ruling. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that there’s no common sense difference between a machine gun and a semiautomatic firearm with a bump stock. Most state laws, however, remain in place because the decision covered the ATF rule, not the constitutionality of state-level bans, according David Pucino, legal director of the gun control think tank Giffords.A group called the New Civil Liberties Alliance sued to challenge the bump stock ban on behalf of Michael Cargill, a Texas gun shop owner. Cargill bought two bump stocks in 2018 and then surrendered them once the federal ban took effect, according to court documents.