The man who challenged the federal government’s ban on so-called bump stocks for rifles at the Supreme Court this week said that just being inside the courtroom as his case was argued was “moving” and “exciting,” as he insisted the federal government overreached by taking his property.
Michael Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works, said he had felt he had to stand up and fight because any gun-related ban should have come from Congress — not from a federal agency.
He traveled to Washington to hear his lawyer on Wednesday tell the justices why they have to overturn the ban, arguing it exceeded the agency’s authority to act.
“It was very exciting and I was very overwhelmed with joy that I made it this far fighting for something I believe in,” Mr. Cargill told The Washington Times in an exclusive interview after the hearing.
Though they are not firearms themselves, bump stocks allow semiautomatic weapons to fire repeatedly at high speed. Mr. Cargill said the government’s definition of a machine gun — which is banned under federal law — would apply to anything that allows a trigger to be held down continuously — including even laser guns.
“If you listen to the government’s attorney, what they are saying is their definition of a machine gun would be a modern energy gun or a laser gun,” he said.
The case came about after Mr. Cargill surrendered his bump stocks after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives banned them in 2018 in the aftermath of a 2017 shooting that killed 60 people in Las Vegas and wounded hundreds more. The shooter in that incident used bump stocks.
Mr. Cargill subsequently filed a lawsuit arguing that the ATF’s ban violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how agencies create, issue and enforce regulations.
“At the time, nobody wanted to fight the administration because it was [President Trump] that said, ’Hey, we are going to ban this, we are going to get rid of them.’ Even the NRA was on board … and I said I can’t stand for this. I said I will go in on my own and do what I have to do because I purchased something legally,” Mr. Cargill said.
The full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, reasoning that the government’s use of a decades-old ban on machine guns and applying that to bump stocks was ambiguous.
The Biden administration’s appeal went before the justices earlier this week and they’ll decide if bump stocks can be classified as machine guns and be banned under the National Firearms Act of 1934. A decision is expected by the end of June.
Technicalities and textualism
The justices struggled during oral arguments on the difference between the firing of a machine gun and the way a bump stock operates. The justices repeatedly asked lawyers how many times a trigger is pulled with a bump stock compared to the standard pull of a trigger on a machine gun.
The court’s liberal wing appeared ready to move past technicalities over the trigger’s action, saying that’s irrelevant to the intent of the machine gun ban.
“Textualism is not inconsistent with common sense,” Justice Elena Kagan said. “What this statute comprehends is a weapon that fires a multitude of shots with a single human action.”
However, the conservative wing raised concerns over a statute from the 1930s being applied to modern devices, suggesting that Congress could ban bump stocks with more precise language if it desired.
“It’s a very old statute,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said. “Maybe they should have written something better. One might hope they write something better in the future, but that’s the language we’re stuck with.”
Mr. Cargill argues that only Congress, not the ATF, can ban bump stocks. An agency shouldn’t have the authority to make laws and ban various aspects of the firearm industry, he says.
The Trump administration, through the ATF, prohibited bump stocks after the Las Vegas shooting, in which a gunman used the devices to shoot more than 500 people in 11 minutes.
The ATF’s 2018 rule cited a law passed by Congress restricting ownership of machine guns manufactured after 1986 under an application of the National Firearms Act. The federal government’s position is that bump stocks make nearly any gun a machine gun when attached to a firearm.
Owners had until March 2019 to surrender their bump stocks after they were outlawed.
According to the ATF, more than 500,000 Americans purchased bump stocks during the nearly 10-year period they were lawfully available. The expected loss of property value is expected to exceed $100 million, according to court documents.
The high court had previously declined to review the legality of a bump stock ban at least three times. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 6th, 10th and D.C. circuits refused to hear challenges to the ATF’s rule.
For nine years, the ATF had concluded that bump stocks are not machine guns because “they did not ‘automatically’ shoot more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger,” according to court records.
That interpretation changed after the 2017 mass shooting.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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