The Supreme Court has just ruled that the ATF exceeded its authority in 2018 when ruling that bump stocks convert rifles into machine guns and therefore they should be illegal.
The ruling was 6-3, with Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissenting.
According to Amy Howe with SCOTUSBLOG:
The question in this case is whether a bumpstock (an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger to fire very quickly) converts the rifle into a machinegun. The court holds that it does not.
“The Thomas opinion explains that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” because it does not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger” as the statute requires.”
Alito has a concurring opinion in which he says that he joins the court’s opinion because there “is simply no other way to read the statutory language. There can be little doubt,” he writes, “that the Congress that enacted” the law at issue here “would not have seen any material difference between a machinegun and a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bumpstock. But the statutory text is clear, and we must follow it.”
Alito suggests that Congress “can amend the law–and perhaps would have done so already if ATF had stuck with its earlier interpretation.”
You can read the full opinion below:
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