Supreme Court wrestles with Trump-era bump stock ban

The Supreme Court during oral arguments Wednesday wrestled with the Trump-era ban on bump stocks, which convert semi-automatic weapons to fire hundreds of rounds per minute.

The justices appeared divided as to whether the government lawfully prohibited the devices, used in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, by classifying them as machine guns.

”I can’t understand how anybody could think that those two things should be treated differently,” said liberal Justice Elena Kagan.

Several conservative justices, however, appeared wary of the ban, expressing concerns about how bump stock owners can newly be criminally prosecuted — and face up to 10 years in prison — without even knowing their devices are unlawful.

For years, the government considered bump stocks legal. The Trump administration at the time then told owners of the devices nationwide to surrender them after a gunman in 2017 used a bump stock to kill 58 people and wound hundreds of others at a music festival in Las Vegas, the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

“That will ensnare a lot of people who are not aware of the legal prohibition,” conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh pressed the government.

Fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito also noted the possibility and similarly said, “Isn’t that disturbing?”

Wednesday’s case came about after Michael Cargill, an Austin-based gun store owner, challenged the bump stock ban after surrendering two in 2019.

It marks the second gun rights dispute at the Supreme Court this term, though the case does not implicate the Second Amendment. Instead, it asks whether the Trump-era Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) could lawfully issue the ban by considering bump stocks as machine guns. 

Congress for decades has prohibited the transfer and possession of machine guns, defined as weapons that fire “automatically more than one shot … by a single function of the trigger.” 

Much of the 90-minute argument focused on the mechanics of bump stocks, with the justices and lawyers repeatedly making finger guns and other gestures as they debated whether the decades-old statute applies to the device, which was invented in the early 2000s. 

Bump stocks enable a shooter to continuously fire if they keep their trigger finger stationary on the finger rest and use their other hand to apply constant forward pressure on the rifle’s barrel. It can enable a gun to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, mimicking the output of a fully automatic weapon.

The justices sparred over whether that continuous firing is only a “single function of the trigger.” 

The liberal justices expressed sympathy with the government that it is, focusing on the shooter’s perspective and noting a person’s trigger hand remains stationary as dozens of bullets are fired. 

Jonathan Mitchell, Cargill’s attorney, focused on the perspective of the firearm, noting the gun’s assembly — and the trigger itself — still slides back and forth for every shot, insisting each is a separate function.

“It has nothing to do with the shooter or what shooter does that trigger, because the shooter does not have a function,” said Mitchell, who also represents former President Trump at the high court in his ongoing ballot disqualification case.

“The statute is concerned only with what the trigger does.”

The argument garnered sympathy from several conservatives, including Justice Neil Gorsuch.

“You liken it to stroke of a key, or a throw of the dice, or swing of the bat. Those are all things people do,” Gorsuch pressed the government. “A function of the trigger, do people function triggers?”

“I thought, maybe somewhere in fifth-grade grammar, I learned that was an intransitive verb,” Gorsuch joked. “And people don’t function things. They may pull things, they may throw things — they don’t function things.”

Principal Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher pushed back on the notion.

“Our view is that those subsequent movements of the trigger aren’t functions of the trigger, because they’re not responding to separate acts, separate pulls or anything else by the shooter,” said Fletcher, who represents the Biden administration.

The administration is backed by gun control advocacy groups like March for Our Lives and Everytown for Gun Safety, which wrote friend of the court briefs warning that enabling people to own the devices again would make Americans less safe. 

The National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups, meanwhile, are seeking to invalidate the ban.

It is the second gun case at the Supreme Court this term and one of multiple implicating the power of federal agencies.

In the fall, the justices heard arguments about whether a federal ban on gun possession for people under domestic violence restraining orders is constitutional.

A decision in that case as well as the one heard Wednesday, Garland v. Cargill, is expected by the end of June.

“I’m here today to stop ATF from overstepping its proper authority. ATF’s bump-stock ban turned law-abiding citizens into criminals even though they were compliant with the statute. That’s not right, and the Supreme Court should condemn it once and for all,” Cargill said in a statement following the arguments.

Updated at 2:16 p.m.