The SCOTUS Bump Stock Decision

The Supreme Court’s decision last week in Garland v. Cargill checked a lot of boxes in the ongoing ideological and political warfare over the Court:

    • It involved the always controversial subject of gun control, although it was not a Second Amendment case as such. (No one argued that banning bump stocks would be unconstitutional.)
    • It featured a 6-3 split with all Republican-appointed “conservative” justices in the majority and all Democratic “liberal” appointees in dissent.
    • It dealt with an issue that Congress tried but failed to resolve by clarifying legislation.
    • It specifically addressed an executive agency’s attempted resolution of the issue in the absence of congressional action.
    • The majority relied on a strict reading of the relevant statutory text, while the dissenters relied primarily on the purposes of the statute and consequences of the decision.
    • While faithful to the statutory language, the outcome was unappealing (to say the least) as a matter of policy and common sense.
    • The decision was praised by conservative media but condemned by media on the left.

By way of background, federal law generally bans private ownership of machine guns, defined as weapons that fire multiple rounds automatically and without reloading “by a single function of the trigger.” When added to a semiautomatic rifle, a bump stock enables it to fire rounds at rates approaching those of machine guns with minimal effort by the shooter. However, the trigger must be activated for each round to fire. Before 2017, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) did not consider a weapon equipped with a bump stock to be a machine gun.

In 2017, a shooter in Las Vegas used bump stock-equipped weapons to kill 58 people and wound another 500 or more. This horrific tragedy understandably prompted widespread outrage and calls for bump stocks to be banned. Many bills to do so were introduced in Congress but they stalled. At the urging of then President Trump, ATF subsequently reversed its prior position and determined that weapons with bump stocks were indeed machine guns. The Court overturned that ATF determination in Cargill.

Media reaction adhered to the usual ideological divide. For example, the Wall Street Journal extolled the Cargill decision as a “straightforward case of statutory interpretation” that corrected an ATF overreach that had “let Congress off the hook.” A Washington Post pundit countered: “Conservatives on the Supreme Court have decided that more Americans must die in mass shootings because they have a quibble over the word ‘function.’”  

The Cargill decision fits neither Manichean media characterization. The majority’s reading of the specific statutory language seems correct, although hardly straightforward. It takes much excruciatingly technical analysis to get there. On the other hand, the dissent seems correct in saying that a semiautomatic weapon with a bump stock is functionally equivalent to a machine gun and thus deserves the same ban.

In any event, it’s sheer demagoguery to accuse the Court of having blood on its hands for applying the law as written, no matter how technical it may be. The real culprit here is, of course, Congress for once again abdicating its responsibilities to the executive branch and the courts.

A brief concurrence by (the much maligned of late) Justice Alito captures the essence of the case:

“There can be little doubt that the Congress that enacted [the machine gun ban] would not have seen any material difference between a machinegun and a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock. But the statutory text is clear, and we must follow it.”

He concludes by in effect urging Congress to finish the task it abandoned in the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas tragedy.

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