Supreme Court Will Review Federal Bump Stock Ban

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a case challenging the federal ban on bump stocks.

The Fifth Circuit struck down the ATF’s rule earlier this year in Garland v. Cargill. The Supreme Court granted the government’s appeal of the ruling in a brief order.

The ATF’s bump stock rule was proposed by the Trump administration in the aftermath of the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert, which killed 58 and wounded over 500.

“In defining the term machinegun, Congress referred to the mechanism by which the gun’s trigger causes bullets to be fired,” the Fifth Circuit majority found in January. “Policy judgments aside, we are bound to apply that mechanical definition. And applying that definition to a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a non-mechanical bump stock, we conclude that such a weapon is not a machinegun for purposes of the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act.”

The Sixth Circuit also struck down the rule in a separate case in April.

LEGAL ALERT: The Supreme Court has granted the cert petitions in a lawsuit challenging the federal bump stock ban and a First Amendment lawsuit involving the NRA’s speech. pic.twitter.com/lURyAGDFqL

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) November 3, 2023

The Supreme Court previously declined to block the rule in 2019 and rejected two appeals by gun owners seeking to reverse it in 2022. The appeals court rulings this year striking down the rule created a circuit split.

George Mason University Assistant Professor of Law Robert Leider told the Daily Caller News Foundation in October that the case centers on the intersection of administrative and criminal law, rather than the Second Amendment.

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