The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to take up a challenge to a ban on bump stocks put in place by former President Donald Trump after a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.
The Biden administration asked the high court to uphold the Trump-era policy. Gun rights supporters also requested the court take up the issue and strike the ban down, according to NBC News.
The ban has been litigated in lower courts for years. Federal courts have reached differing conclusions on the issue, which is whether the Trump administration had the authority under the National Firearms Act of 1934 and Gun Control Act of 1968 to ban bump stocks.
The United States has long banned machine guns, which are capable of firing multiple rounds per each time the trigger is pulled. A bump stock is a device that can be attached to a semi-automatic firearm and reduce the length of time between trigger pulls by harnessing the gun’s energy from recoil.
Officials estimate over half a million bump stocks were sold in the United States before the Trump administration ordered them turned over to authorities, according to The Hill.
The case hinges on the boundaries of executive authority outlined in federal gun laws.
“The interpretive rule did not alter or enlarge the scope of the statutory prohibition on possessing or transferring new machineguns,” the Justice Department said in a court filing, according to The Hill. “The rule instead merely served to inform the public of ATF’s considered view that bump stocks are ‘machineguns’ as Congress defined that term.”
But gun rights proponents disagree. Gun shop owner and firearms instructor Michael Cargill is one of the challengers to the Trump-era reinterpretation of the law. Cargill’s legal team says that use of a bump stock does not fundamentally change the weapon into an automatic firearm.
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“A weapon is not a machine gun if something more is required of the shooter than a single function of the trigger to produce more than one shot,” Cargill’s Supreme Court brief said.
“The plain meaning of that sentence is that a weapon is not a ‘machinegun’ if something more is required of the shooter than a single function of the trigger to produce more than one shot. And, as the Final Rule concedes, the shooter must do considerably more than pull the trigger once if he wishes the weapon to fire multiple shots,” the brief says.