Supreme Court Overturns Bump Stock Ban

Gun owners across the country have cause to celebrate this weekend. Months after hearing arguments from both sides of the aisle, the US Supreme Court has struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks.

US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC.

Supreme Court Votes 6-3 to Overturn Bump Stock Ban

On June 14, 2024, the US Supreme Court voted 6-3 that bump stocks were not a machinegun under the definition set forth by the National Firearms Act (NFA).

Under that definition, a machinegun is “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

The Context

In the ruling, justice Clarence Thomas said that “a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” … because: (1) it cannot fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger” and (2) even if it could, it would not do so “automatically.”

Instead, bump stocks work by harnessing a gun’s recoil energy. This energy causes the receiver of the gun to slide back and forth. The motion resets and re-engages the trigger without forcing the shooter to move their finger. However, the trigger is still activated multiple times.

The end result is a facsimile of automatic fire. But based on the ATF’s own definitions, bump stocks are not legally firearms. The Supreme Court even ruled that the ATF overstepped its authority by issuing the rule.

Justices Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett signed the majority opinion.

The decision was the conclusion of Cargill v Garland, which kicked off oral arguments in February.

As of now, bump stocks are federally legal. However, some states still have laws on the books banning them.

A bump stock on an AKM.

The Opposition

Three judges opposed the court’s decision: Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. They argued that even though a bump stock may not have met the legal requirements of a “machinegun,” it functionally converted a firearm into one capable of fully-automatic fire.

Sotomayor penned the court’s dissenting opinion. In it, she said "when I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires 'automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”

The Big Picture

In 2010, the ATF specifically stated that bump stocks were not machineguns. This allowed gun stores to sell them unregulated for nearly a decade.

The bump stock ban traces its origins back to 2018. That year, Donald Trump requested the Justice Department legally reclassify bump stocks as machineguns under the (NFA). Trump’s request was in response to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

Michael Cargill, the plaintiff in the case, is an Army veteran and gun store owner in Texas. When the ATF issued their new rule on bump stocks, Cargill voluntarily surrendered several bump stocks to the authorities.

The same day he surrendered the bump stocks, he filed a lawsuit claiming the ATF’s new rule was illegal.

This ruling marks the end of a multi-year battle for Cargill, who is well-known on social media. On his X page, he posted a video where he says:

“I was told over 5 years ago, ‘why are you going down this road? No one cares about bump stocks, let’s go ahead and let them take [them]. Instead, I took a stand… I’m glad I stood up and fought.”

Our hats go off to Mr. Cargill.