The restriction on bump stocks, the fast-firing firearm modification used in the bloodiest mass shooting in US history, has been removed by the US Supreme Court.
The court ruled on Friday that the government lacked the authority to outlaw the accessories. After bump stocks were used to murder almost 60 people at a concert in Las Vegas in 2017, the Trump administration outlawed them.
The government went too far in classifying the attachments as machine guns, which are prohibited by federal law, according to a Texas gun store owner who challenged the restriction. He carried his case all the way to the nation's highest court. According to the court, a semi-automatic rifle that has an attachment is not a machine gun as defined by federal law. Some justices on the conservative-led court were dubious of the prohibition at a hearing on the issue in March, pointing out that neither Congress nor any previous presidential administration had attempted to make the relatively new devices illegal.
Any "weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, electronically more than one shot requiring manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger" is classified as a machine gun under the 1986 Firearms Act. The bump stock uses the recoil of a rifle to fire numerous bullets quickly. It permits the pistol to move back and forth between the user's shoulder and trigger finger, replacing the stock of the weapon, which is held against the shoulder. Without requiring the user to move their finger, that action, or bump, activates the gun.
The perpetrator in the shooting incident in Las Vegas was able to fire hundreds of rounds per minute—the same pace as many machine guns—by adding bump stocks to twelve of his semi-automatic weapons. He attacked a crowd of people attending a music festival, killing 60 of them and injuring hundreds more. This narrative is still evolving. There will be more updates soon.
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