Hey, What Do You Know? My Bump Stock Just Washed Ashore After 7 Years!

Turns out I should’ve just waited for low tide. Silly me!

And here I thought it was lost forever in that tragic boating accident!

In totally unrelated news, the Supreme Court made a ruling, and as it turns out, the ATF is actually not allowed to decide that a gun part is the same thing as a machine gun. It must have been one crushing blow to Steve Dettelbach and his ATF, coming as it did on the heels of some uncomfortable interrogation from Congress on another of ATF’s little boo-boos.

It’s wonderful watching the ATF get smacked with a rolled-up magazine, and even better watching its nose get rubbed in the messes it has made. Speaking of dog training, every time ATF’s unconstitutional rules get reversed by a court or Congress, that’s one less chance for ATF agents to shoot citizens and their dogs. (Oh, how they love to shoot dogs.) And today, the Second Amendment Foundation has further details about the latest pro-2A SCOTUS ruling.

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The Second Amendment Foundation is hailing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a machinegun, and that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority by issuing a rule that classified the device as a machinegun. The case is known as Garland v. Cargill.

“This is a significant victory for gun owners because it reminds the ATF it simply cannot rewrite federal law,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The agency has just been reminded that it can only enforce the law, not usurp the authority of Congress.”

Writing for the majority, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas observed, “We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’ And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically.’ ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns.”

For many years, the court ruling notes, ATF “took the position that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks were not machineguns” under the law. The agency “abruptly reversed course” in response to the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada in October 2017. The agency subsequently ordered bump stock owners to surrender them or destroy them within 90 days.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision demonstrates that it is impermissible for executive agencies to rewrite the law,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, a practicing attorney who filed the first lawsuit challenging ATF’s final rule in 2018 while in private practice. “ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a rule that was logically inconsistent with the plain text of the statute and cut into the prerogative of Congress. As the executive branch has continued to use ATF to implement its will and circumvent congressional authority, we are optimistic that today’s decision will send a message that such actions will not be tolerated and that the courts will strike down more regulations inconsistent with the law as Congress wrote.”

David Bronson

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