OREM, UT - FEBRUARY 21: Vince Warner fires an AK-47 with a bump stock installed at Good Guys Gun and Range on February 21, 2018 in Orem, Utah. The bump stock is a device when installed allows a semi-automatic to fire at a rapid rate much like a fully automatic gun.
He was joined by his fellow conservatives. Justice Samuel Alito wrote a short separate opinion to stress that Congress can change the law to equate bump stocks with machine guns. Former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign team said it respects the court's decision in a statement that quickly pivoted to politics, touting his endorsement by the National Rifle Association. President Joe Biden did not have an immediate comment.
It marked the latest gun case to come before the high court. A conservative supermajority handed down a landmark decision expanding gun rights in 2022 and is weighing another gun case challenging a federal law intended to keep guns away from people under domestic violence restraining orders. The high court took up the case after a split among lower courts over bump stocks, which were invented in the early 2000s. Under Republican President George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama, the ATF decided that bump stocks didn't transform semiautomatic weapons into machine guns. The agency reversed those decisions at Trump's urging after the shooting in Las Vegas and another mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 dead.