{"id":1459889,"date":"2024-02-29T02:40:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T07:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1459889"},"modified":"2024-02-29T02:40:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T07:40:00","slug":"supreme-court-seems-divided-over-atf-bump-stock-regulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/supreme-court-seems-divided-over-atf-bump-stock-regulation\/1459889\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Seems Divided Over ATF Bump Stock Regulation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supreme Court Seems Divided Over ATF Bump Stock Regulation<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court seemed divided during oral argument on Feb. 28 over whether it would uphold the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) regulation prohibiting ownership of bump stocks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

That regulation came after the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas where a gunman used bump stock-equipped firearms. It reversed years of ATF interpretations allowing non-mechanical bump stocks, or those without a spring.<\/p>\n

In doing so, ATF reinterpreted a post-Prohibition law that banned the use of machine guns. <\/strong>Unlike other gun rights cases, the attorneys in this case\u2014Garland v. Cargill\u2014didn\u2019t talk much about the Second Amendment. Rather, they sought to convince the justices that the phrases \u201cautomatically\u201d and \u201csingle function of the trigger\u201d within federal law either did or didn\u2019t apply to bump stocks.<\/p>\n

Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote an opinion from 2022 upholding gun rights, peppered the Biden administration with questions focused on teasing out the differences in operating a firearm with or without a bump stock.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Much of the debate focused on whether bump stocks allowed a single trigger pull to initiate a process by which bullets were rapidly released.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Mitchell, the New Civil Liberties Alliance attorney arguing for Michael Cargill, repeatedly emphasized that bump stocks only allowed one bullet per trigger pull. He also argued that firing with bump stocks didn\u2019t meet the statutory language of \u201csingle function of the trigger\u201d due to grammatical reasons and the fact that bump stock users had to apply pressure to maintain accelerated fire.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Principal Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher and Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson suggested instead that bump stocks allowed users to initiate a process with the bump stock after a single pull of the trigger.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce the shooter presses forward to fire the first shot, the bump stock uses the gun\u2019s recoil energy to create a continuous back-and-forth cycle that fires hundreds of shots per minute,\u201d Mr. Fletcher said.<\/em><\/p>\n

Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Mr. Fletcher that she was \u201centirely sympathetic to your argument,\u201d stating that \u201cthis is functioning like a machinegun would.\u201d She questioned, however, why Congress didn\u2019t pass legislation to cover bump stocks \u201cmore clearly.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The case arose from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which ruled in favor of Mr. Cargill while noting that the legal rule of lenity required they rule against the government when the meaning of a statute was unclear.<\/p>\n

NCLA President Mark Chenoweth told The Epoch Times he thought the Court would rule in favor of Mr. Cargill given its textualist composition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a majority of justices who are textualists, and they\u2018ll look at the text, and they\u2019ll look at the way that the gun functions, and I think that they will decide that the bump stock is on the outside of the machinegun ban.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The National Firearms Act<\/h2>\n

Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh raised concerns about how ATF\u2019s 2018 regulation would apply to people who later owned bump stocks.<\/strong> But most of the questioning focused on how bump stocks operate, the wording of the National Firearms Act, and Congress\u2019 intent in passing the law in 1934.<\/p>\n

Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n

The three liberal justices seemed skeptical of Mr. Mitchell\u2019s arguments\u2014particularly Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson, who suggested he was asserting an irrelevant distinction for the federal law involved.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both questioned whether the overall thrust of the 1934 law was intended to prevent use of devices like bump stocks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as I can tell, the sort of common usage of the word \u2018function\u2019 is not its operational design. It\u2019s not the mechanics of the thing. It is what it achieves, what it\u2019s being used for,\u201d Justice Jackson told Mr. Mitchell.<\/em><\/p>\n

She added that \u201cweapons with bump stocks have triggers that function in the same way. They\u2014through a single, right, pull of the trigger or touch of the trigger, you achieve the same result of automatic fire.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Mitchell countered that \u201ca\u00a0single discharge of the trigger produces only one shot. It doesn\u2019t produce a round of automatic fire. The only way you get to repeated shots with a bump stock equipped rifle is for the shooter himself to continually undertake manual action by thrusting the forestock of the rifle forward with his non-shooting hand.<\/strong><\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the confusion surrounding the statute involves ATF\u2019s contention that \u201csingle function of the trigger\u201d under federal law included a \u201csingle pull of the trigger.\u201d Both Justice Neil Gorsuch and Mr. Mitchell cast doubt on that interpretation, noting that \u201cfunction\u201d was a transitive verb.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople don\u2019t function things,\u201d Justice Gorsuch said. \u201cThey may pull things, they may throw things, but they don\u2019t function things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Justice Kagan suggested that Mr. Mitchell\u2019s interpretation lacked common sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI view myself as a good textualist,\u201d <\/strong>she said. \u201cI think that that\u2019s the way we should think about statutes. It\u2019s by reading them.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBut, you know, textualism is not inconsistent with common sense,\u201d she added. \u201cLike, at some point, you have to apply a little bit of common sense to the way you read a statute and understand that what this statute comprehends is a weapon that fires a multitude of shots with a single human action.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it\u2019s a continuous pressure on a … conventional machinegun, holding the trigger, or a continuous pressure on one of these devices on the barrel … I can\u2019t understand how anybody could think that those two things should be treated differently.<\/strong>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Justice Alito asked Mr. Mitchell whether his case was one where \u201cthe literal language of the statute had to control even though it\u2019s pretty hard to think that Congress actually meant that to apply in certain situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potential Congressional Action<\/h2>\n

Justice Gorsuch indicated he thought Congressional action would have been preferable to an ATF rule interpreting prior legislation. He also asked about former Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) criticizing the use of regulation to ban bump stocks.<\/p>\n

Justice Kavanaugh noted that bump stocks didn\u2019t exist around the time of the 1934 law\u2019s passage. He went on to ask Mr. Fletcher: \u201cWhat\u2019s your explanation, maybe common-sense explanation or some other explanation, for why, when this does become an issue, the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, Senator Feinstein, all say no?\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside of the Court, Mr. Cargill told The Epoch Times he thought Congress had authority over the issue but didn\u2019t think it should pass a law regulating bump stocks.<\/p>\n

The Epoch Times asked both he and Mr. Mark Chenoweth whether bump stocks were protected by the Second Amendment. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Mr. Cargill said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Chenoweth similarly said he didn\u2019t know about the Second Amendment question and would have to look at how history did or didn\u2019t support bump stocks\u2019 protection under the Constitution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look at this as an abuse of administrative power case, not as a Second Amendment case,\u201d he said. \u201cIf Congress had passed this law, we wouldn\u2019t be challenging it.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 02\/28\/2024 – 21:40<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bRead More<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supreme Court Seems Divided Over ATF Bump Stock Regulation Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times, The Supreme Court seemed divided during oral argument…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1459889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}