Biden Admin Asks Supreme Court to Restore Bump Stock Ban

The Justice Department has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a ban on” bump stocks” until it hears the case after the Biden administration petitioned the court on Friday to hear an appeal of the lower court’s’s decision that suspended the federal ban.

Bump stocks, which are accessories that allow semi-automatic weapons to increase firing speed, were outlawed in 2019 when the Department of Justice ( DOJ ) changed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ ( ATF ) rules to classify bump stocks as machine guns and make them illegal.

Michael Cargill, master of Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, filed a complaint in response to the ban, and he was successful when the Fifth Circuit recently decided to nullify the ATF restrictions on knock assets.

The Fifth Circuit’s’s ruling overturning the ban was appealed by the Department of Justice ( DOJ ) on Friday.

In response to the DOJ’s’s most recent action, Cargill stated in a statement posted on social media that” their appeal— what they refer to as writ of certiorari — to the Supreme Court, asking the Court to hear this case, also asks that the lower court in Austin actually do, meaning that keep bump stocks banned.”

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar submitted the plea for a petition of certiorari to the Supreme Court on behalf of the DOJ. A rigorous request is made to an upper court to evaluate and possibly reverse an earlier court decision.

According to the petition( file ),” The government maintains only that nudge assets are machineguns under the best view of the act.” This Court should grant review and overturn the lower court’s’s ruling because the Fifth Circuit made a mistake in holding otherwise.

According to the DOJ in the argument, that decision” threats significant harm to people safety.” ” Bump stocks enable a hitman to fire hundreds of bullets per minute with just one trigger draw.” Firearms modified with swelling assets are extremely dangerous, just like other machine guns.

Three other national authorities upheld the swelling supply restrictions before the Fifth Circuit ruled in Cargill’s’s pursuit. Those occasions were not reviewed by the US Supreme Court.

More Information

Bump shares were reclassified as machine guns by the DOJ in 2018 under the National Firearms Act, overturning a 2010 ruling that said they were only accessories to firearms and therefore exempt from rifle regulations.

The DOJ’s’s ruling, which went into effect in 2019, followed a shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 that left 58 people dead and hundreds injured. The man used weapons equipped with knock stocks.

The regulatory text was amended by the rule change to read:” The term” machine gun” includes bump-stock devices, i.e., devices that enable a semi-automatic rifle to fire more than one shot at once by utilizing the rebound power of that firearm. This allows the trigger to reset and continue firing without the shooter having to physically manipulate it.

Since those keywords are used in the legal definition of a machine gun, the final rule furthermore defined” instantly” and” single feature of the button.”

Bump-stock-type products fell under the jurisdiction of the National Firearms Act and became restricted, with shareholders being required to eliminate the d because the last act classified them as machine guns.