November 08, 2023
By Mark Chesnut
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case next year to determine the constitutionality of the bump stock ban instituted by the Trump Administration in 2018 and that took effect in 2019. Following a horrific mass murder in Las Vegas in 2017, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department (DOJ) determined that bump stock devices turned guns into “machine guns,” which have been tightly regulated for several decades. Until then, the ATF held that bump stocks were not machine guns, and had sent a number of letters to both manufacturers and dealers to that effect. One such letter, written in 2008, read: “Since your device is incapable of initiating an automatic firing cycle that continues until either the finger is released or the ammunition supply is exhausted, FTB finds that it is NOT a machine gun under the NFA, 26 U.S.C. 5845(b), or the GCA, 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(23).”
The case now headed to the Supreme Court, Cargill v. Garland, revolves around a Texas man who surrendered two bump stocks to the government after the law was changed. His lawsuit claims that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) does not have the legal authority to ban the devices. Earlier this year, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 13-to-3 vote, ruled that the plaintiff was correct and that such a law must be made by Congress.
“The definition of ‘machine gun’ as set forth in the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act does not apply to bump stocks,” Judge Jennifer Elrod wrote in the court opinion . “Indeed, the Government would outlaw bump stocks by administrative fiat even though the very same agency routinely interpreted the ban on machine guns as not applying to the type of bump stocks at issue here.
“Nor can we say that the statutory definition unambiguously supports the government’s interpretation. As noted above, we conclude that it unambiguously does not. But even if we are wrong, the statute is at least ambiguous in this regard. And if the statute is ambiguous, Congress must cure that ambiguity, not the federal courts.”
Advertisement
However, two other federal courts had previously ruled just the opposite in similar bump stock lawsuits. The split in the lower courts is likely what caused the Supreme Court to choose to hear the case. A ruling in Cargill v. Garland is expected sometime next summer.
About the Author Freelance writer and editor Mark Chesnut is the owner/editorial director at Red Setter Communications LLC. An avid hunter, shooter and political observer, he has been covering Second Amendment issues and politics on a near-daily basis for nearly 25 years.
If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, we’d love to hear them. Email us at FirearmsNews@Outdoorsg.com .
Advertisement
