Court holds technical issue more important than saving lives

>> Back in 2019, the BenIndy covered news of the passage of the bump stock ban following the Las Vegas massacre. At that time, the welcome headline was Bump Stock Ban Now Official Nationwide – Supreme Court. A few days later, a follow-up story headline was Supreme Court Refuses to Block ‘Bump Stock’ Ban Over Thomas and Gorsuch’s Dissent.

Public reaction was so strong after the Las Vegas disaster that even the National Rifle Association joined the call for the add-ons to be taken out of circulation.

Oh how times have changed – on the Supreme Court, that is. Today, the 6 rightwing justices took issue with the technical definition of a machine gun and ignored the fundamental intent of the 1930’s machine gun ban AND the 2019 bump stock ban – to eliminate the massive threat of high volume military style weaponry on our streets. Reporting by the New York Times and others follow here.

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NYT Editorial: The Supreme Court’s Bump Stock Decision Will Prove Fatal

New York Times, by David Firestone, Deputy Editor, the Editorial Board

There was nothing abstract about the 6-to-3 decision issued Friday morning by the Supreme Court to permit bump stocks to be used on semiautomatic rifles. It is one of the most astonishingly dangerous decisions ever issued by the court, and it will almost surely result in a loss of American lives in another mass shooting.

Bump stocks attach to the back of a rifle and use the gun’s recoil to enable shooting hundreds of bullets at a very rapid pace, far faster than anyone could shoot by pressing the trigger multiple times. The device is the reason the Las Vegas shooter in 2017 was able to kill 60 people and wound more than 400 others so quickly in the nation’s worst mass shooting in modern history.

Bump stock devices were banned the next year, just as all fully automatic machine guns are banned for public use, but the six conservative members of the court seemed entirely unbothered by their deadly potential. The opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, parses in a ridiculous level of detail whether bump stocks truly fit the precise mechanical definition of a machine gun. Because the court feels the need to give the greatest possible deference to the ownership of guns, however they might be used, the court concluded that they are not really machine guns, as they do not allow firing multiple rounds “by a single function of the trigger.”

The opinion, full of lovingly detailed close-up drawings of a gun’s innards (provided by the Firearms Policy Foundation, a pro-gun nonprofit group), says nothing about the purpose of a bump stock. Why would someone buy the device and use it? Only to fire a lightning burst of rounds. In the hands of an angry shooter — and there are so many of them — it would produce far more carnage, which is why even the Trump administration banned it.

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent laced with astonishment at what her colleagues had done, didn’t hesitate to explain what was really happening. “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,” she wrote, and in this case, the duck is an illegal machine gun. (Which, by the way, is not typically used for killing ducks.) Skilled shooters using an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle can fire 180 rounds per minute, she wrote, but a bump stock allows them to fire 400 to 800 rounds per minute, which is the ordinary understanding of a fully automatic machine gun.

“Today’s decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences,” Sotomayor wrote. “The majority’s artificially narrow definition hamstrings the government’s efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.” And when the next Las Vegas happens, it will not be enough to blame it on the madness of a single deranged individual. There are so many others.

David Firestone, a former reporter and editor for the Washington bureau and the Metropolitan and National desks of The Times, is a member of the editorial board.

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Breaking coverage:

• • The Guardian, US supreme court strikes down federal ban on ‘bump stock’ devices for guns
  • The Hill, Sotomayor rips Thomas’s bump stocks ruling in scathing dissent read from bench
  • Salon, “Walks like a duck, swims like a duck”: Sonia Sotomayor torches Supreme Court’s bump stock ruling

Get Involved – Everytown For Gun Safety

Previously on the BenIndy:

• • Bump stocks on the BenIndy
  • Gun Violence on the BenIndy
  • Mass shootings on the BenIndy