Gun control groups ask Supreme Court to take up bump-stock ban

Gun control groups are asking the Supreme Court to take up a case over the banning of bump stocks and give the federal government a green light to prohibit their use and sale.

The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and Everytown for Gun Safety filed a brief with the high court in support of the Biden Justice Department’s fight to have the court take up the case of Cargill v. Garland.

The groups argue Congress banned machine guns in 1934 with the National Firearms Act, and bump stocks — when attached to a firearm — make nearly any gun a machine gun.

“If an invention turns an ordinary gun into a machinegun, it is a machinegun. And it is illegal. ’Bump stocks’ turn semi-automatic rifles into machineguns. That is their sole purpose,” they argue in the court filing.

“When a rifle is outfitted with a bump stock, the shooter need only pull the trigger once, and the gun will fire continuously so long as the shooter keeps his trigger finger stationary and applies forward pressure to the barrel.”

President Trump’s administration, through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, moved to prohibit bump stocks after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting in which a gunman used the device to shoot more than 500 people in 11 minutes. Sixty people died.

The ATF’s 2018 rule cited Congress’ law restricting machine gun ownership on models manufactured after 1986.

The feds’ rule was challenged by a man who turned over his bump stocks to the government during the rulemaking process and later sued.

Lower courts had ruled for the government but the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reheard the case and decided due to ambiguity, bump stocks shouldn’t be considered machine guns. The decision effectively made the ATF rule unlawful.

The Justice Department says the 5th Circuit was wrong not to read the legislation as encompassing bump stocks, since they fire continuously like machine guns.

The DOJ is asking the high court to review the 5th Circuit decision. It would take four justices to vote to do so.

The Supreme Court has previously declined on at least three occasions to review the legality of a bump stock ban, but now there is a conflict among lower federal courts — a key factor in persuading the Supreme Court to take up cases on any subject.