The bump stock allows the gun stock, which rests on the shoulder, to slide backwards and forwards to utilize the weapon’s natural recoil to shoot rapidly.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a 13-3 decision, ruled that the regulation established under the administration of former President Donald Trump was unconstitutional. According to Reuters, the judges indicated that gun control actions should be undertaken by Congress instead of the executive branch.
The gun restriction was put into place as a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) rule after an assailant used the additions to kill 58 people at a Las Vegas country music concert in Oct. 2017.
The shooter, who fired from a high-rise hotel window, used rifles equipped with bump stocks to fire over 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes. His target was an outdoor concert attended by 22,000 fans.
The appeals court noted that ATF officials reacted under “tremendous” public pressure after the Nevada tragedy. It said the agency largely bypassed the legislative process while not having the authority granted by Congress to do so.
The ATF stretched the federal government’s ban on machine guns to include bump stocks. In 2018, the agency reclassified weapons with bump stocks that included “bump fire stocks, slide fire devices, and devices with certain similar characteristics” as machine guns.
It used definitions put into place by the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968.
But the court disagreed. U.S. Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, in writing for the majority, noted the law did not provide “fair warning that possession of a non-mechanical bump stock is a crime.” She declared that a simple reading of the statutory language joined by an understanding of the operations of a semiautomatic weapon clearly shows the bump stock is excluded from earlier technical definitions of a machine gun.
She further said that the law banning machine guns did not clearly prohibit bump stocks.
One of the three dissenting judges, Stephen Higginson, criticized the majority’s decision as using reasoning “to legalize an instrument of mass murder.”
The ban, which was also supported by the Biden administration, was upheld in Dec. 2021 by a three-judge 5th Circuit panel. At that time the court ruled against Texas gun owner Michael Cargill, who had filed suit opposing the regulation.
But Friday’s decision reversed that lower court ruling.
Mark Chwnoweth, the president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance that argued the case, praised the outcome while noting that it will undoubtedly now be brought to the Supreme Court.
He noted “the resulting circuit split should bring this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court’s attention promptly and supply a suitable vehicle for deciding this issue once and for all.”
Three other federal appeals courts rejected challenges to the bump stock ban, and the Supreme Court last October chose not to hear appeals from two of the rulings.
The action by the Fifth Circuit, however, could land the case in the high court for a final decision.
Legal actions fueled by anger or revenge make for bad law, and while there was plenty of room for both in 2018, attacking Second Amendment constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens was the wrong route to take.
It is fairly certain that the high court, should it decide to take up the bump stock rule, will see it as a violation of the nation’s legislative process and uphold the 5th Circuit’s decision.
