Second Amendment Roundup: Bump Stocks are not Machineguns
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Garland v. Cargill was based purely on the statutory text. The National Firearms Act defines “machinegun” as “any weapon which shoots … automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger….” A bump stock is a device that allows a semiautomatic rifle to fire more rapidly by pulling the trigger and maintaining forward pressure on the handguard, which harnesses recoil to continue firing.
The opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas includes extensive technical information on how the internal parts of AR-15 rifles function, including diagrams and an animated graphic showing the movement of the parts. Firing a rifle with a bump stock still requires a separate function of the trigger for each shot, and it is not “automatic” because it will not fire without constant manual pressure on the handguard. The Court has never before ventured into such a detailed explanation about how a firearm works.
While the Court’s discussion of how the trigger, sear, disconnector, and bolt interact in the firing sequence is quite technical, the decision embodies broader implications that are significant in other contexts.
First, it is settled once and for all that a semiautomatic is not a machinegun. That should be a no-brainer, but plaintiffs alleged that AR-15s are machineguns in the Las Vegas, Highland Park, and Mexico civil lawsuits. Here’s what the Court said: “No one disputes that a semiautomatic rifle without a bump stock is not a machinegun because it fires only one shot per ‘function of the trigger.'”
And dissenting, Justice Sonya Sotomayor agreed: “Semiautomatic weapons are not ‘machineguns’ under the statute. Take, for instance, an AR–15-style semiautomatic assault rifle. To rapidly fire an AR–15, a shooter must rapidly pull the trigger himself.” While the term “assault rifle” is misplaced as applied to a semiautomatic, she correctly referred to “the military’s standard-issue M16 assault rifle” as “the archetypal modern ‘machinegun.'”
Second, Justice Sotomayor referred to AR-15s as “commonly available, semiautomatic rifles.” Recall that the Court in Heller said that firearms “in common use” are protected by the Second Amendment. Some courts that have upheld “assault weapon” bans claiming that AR-15s are not in common use, even though tens of millions of Americans own them.
Third, Cargill was decided solely on the statutory text. No “divine right of deference” was accorded to ATF. Had it claimed deference, it would have raised the issue of which ATF to defer to? The Court notes: “On more than 10 separate occasions over several administrations, ATF consistently concluded that rifles equipped with bump stocks cannot ‘automatically’ fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.'” And any day now we’ll learn if the Chevron deference ship will sink in Loper Bright Enterpris
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