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The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a ruling last week regarding the proper classification of bump stocks, but made a more important decision that further expanded the court’s view of the rights of gun owners.
At issue is whether a bump stock – an attachment to a semi-automatic’s standard stock that can use the recoil to bump the shooter’s trigger finger and fire cartridges in rapid succession – turns a semi-automatic rifle into a banned machine gun. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) previously took the view that semi-automatic rifles with bump stocks were not machine guns until one was used in October 2017 to kill 58 people in Las Vegas. The ATF reversed course and subsequently classified bump stocks the same as machine guns as part of the National Firearms Act and ordered anyone owning a bump stock to destroy or surrender them to avoid criminal prosecution.
Under the context of the National Firearms Act, a machine gun is any weapon that fires continuously after the shooter initially pulls the trigger, thereby defining a machine gun as any weapon designed to shoot more than one shot without reloading and with a single pull of the trigger. The machine gun/bump stock issue was further clouded by the Gun Control Act, passed in 1968, which expanded the definition of a machine gun to include parts and components that could transform a weapon into a machine gun.
The case heard before the Supreme Court stems from an enforcement action from the ATF which seized bump stocks from Central Texas Gun Works owner Michael Cargill. Cargill, an Army veteran, sued the ATF for overstepping its administrative authority by imposing a ban that was not enacted by Congressional legislation by forcing him to surrender two bump stocks under protest. The case, Garland v. Cargill, made its way through the court system before landing in front of the Supreme Court in February through an amicus brief filed by the Constitutional Accountability Center (the petitioner in the case is U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland).
This left the Supreme Court charged with defining what is a single pull of the trigger. Their decision rested on the argument that there is a difference between a shooter flexing his finger to pull the trigger and a shooter pushing the firearm forward to bump the trigger against his stationary finger. The Court in a 6-3 decision subsequently ruled that bump stocks do not fall under the same classification as machine guns, and should, therefore, not fall under the ban imposed by the National Firearms Act.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said, “semi-automatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machine guns. This case asks whether a bump stock – an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger – converts the rifle into a machine gun. We hold that it does not.”
In her blistering dissent to the ruling, Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote, “when I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. A bump-stock equipped semiautomatic rifle fires automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. Because I, like Congress, call that a machine gun, I respectfully dissent.”
Despite the ruling and what ultimately presents itself as a more expansive view on gun rights, the sector registered little reaction during Friday’s trading with shares of Sturm, Ruger (NYSE:RGR), Smith & Wesson (SWBI), Vista Outdoor (VSTO) and American Outdoor Brands (AOUT) all ending the session in the red.
