cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15645865
If the Supreme Court rules that bump stocks aren’t machine guns later this summer, it could quickly open an unfettered marketplace of newer, more powerful rapid-fire devices.
The Trump administration, in a rare break from gun rights groups, quickly banned bump stocks after the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert that was the deadliest in U.S. history. In the ensuing years, gun rights groups challenged the underlying rationale that bump stocks are effectively machine guns — culminating in a legal fight now before the Supreme Court.
A machine gun is defined by the NFA of 1934 using very specific terms. Bump stocks do not meet these terms. There is only one way this will shake out.
bump stocks were not a thing when the definition of a machine gun was formally defined.
we have got to introduce a system where we update definitions and laws that are clearly out-of-date, but we all know why this hasn’t happened yet…
There is a “system” to update statutory definitions - It has to pass Congress. The Executive cannot unilaterally do this. It is a feature, not a bug.
Yeah only that’s not true in practice as the atfe changes their own rules all the time.
Rules-making agencies have to conform to the the statute when issuing rules. They can interpret within the bounds defined by the law, but they aren’t allowed to invent regulation wholesale.
That’s kind of the point of this suit. The ATF’s rule appears to conflict with the statutory text; if the court decides that to be the case, then the statute takes precedent and the rule gets invalidated.
there’s no winning.
Yep, the phrase “by a single function of the trigger” is absolutely key in this case. Bump stocks help you pull the trigger again very quickly after the initial pull, but multiple trigger pulls are still required. It’s the difference between automatic fire and simulated automatic fire.
I think the phrase “or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun” will come into play.
It speaks more of intent than the ‘single trigger pull’. If your intent is to turn a semi-automatic into a functional full-automatic, this would be the phrase that makes that gun a “machinegun”.
We will have to see how it plays out in court.
No, that’s not a plain text reading of the statute. You have to refer to the definition specified, and you can’t replace it with the implication. It would be:
So clearly the second phrase is meant to capture mechanical alterations that turn it into a weapon with automatic fire, not mechanical alterations that turn it into a weapon with simulated automatic fire, or a weapon that approximates automatic fire. Intent isn’t the operative clarifier in the sentence, the functionality is, and intent only comes into play if you intend to convert it into the different functionality. A bump stock doesn’t do that.
Same as using a belt loop
Law is weird. Sometimes courts rule according to the letter of the law, but often courts rule according to the “intention” of the law. There’s often a difference between what a law says and what it really intended.
I mean it’s pretty clear that a law regulating machine guns is meant to affect any firearm that can achieve rapid automatic firing. Lawyers are not engineers or fortune tellers, they should not have to make many mechanical distinctions, and they cannot predict what technologies might be developed in the future. The point of the law is not to regulate mechanical methodology or inner workings, it’s meant to regulate the ultimate functionality of a firearm and the resulting outcomes. Judges and Lawyers understand this and they will sometimes (but not always) make rulings accordingly.
Yeah, they defined a lot of things differently then. They defined legal voters as whites only, should we rely on that definition too?