A makeshift memorial on the Las Vegas Strip on Oct. 3, 2017, after a mass shooting left nearly 60 people dead. It has been almost seven years since a gunman began firing from his hotel window in Las Vegas, wreaking fear and havoc on a crowd of country music concertgoers below. Within about 10 minutes, the shooter fired more than 1,000 shots, leaving 58 people dead and more than 500 wounded, mostly from gunshots.
So devastating and outrageous was this rapid-fire killing spree that political leaders across the ideological spectrum called for a ban on bump stocks. Polls in 2018 showed that large majorities of the public favored such a measure. Even then-President Donald Trump, a Republican devoted to a maximalist view of gun rights, agreed. By the end of 2018, the Trump administration had, in a 6-3 ruling.
That is, the surest way to effectuate a bump stock ban that so many Americans clearly want, and which is so clearly consistent with common sense, is through a law. If there is a silver lining in Friday’s ruling, it might be that it struck the regulation down on purely statutory grounds, not as a violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. That leaves the door open for legislation, as Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
What an occasion for Mr. Trump to abandon his usual contempt for courts that rule against him. The only thing consistent about the man is his inconsistency.Why Europe is falling way behind America’s powerhouse economy