In a decision that made both gun rights advocates cheer and grammar sticklers weep for the oxymoronic phrase “machine-like,” the Supreme Court on Friday struck down a federal ban on bump stocks, those delightful accessories that transform semi-automatic rifles into something approximating a fully automatic boomstick. The 6 to 3 ruling fell neatly along ideological lines, because of course it did.
Justice Clarence Thomas, authoring the majority opinion, held that bump stocks do not turn a firearm into a machine gun under federal law. According to Thomas, such accessories may indeed increase the fire rate to worryingly impressive levels, but they do not fundamentally alter the way the gun functions internally. In short, the trigger is still doing more than just existing, which is apparently the key legal benchmark.
“A semi-automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock does not fire more than one shot automatically by a single function of the trigger,” wrote Thomas, making one wonder whether the Court has discovered a new genre of firearm metaphysics in which counting trigger pulls matters more than counting casualties.
The Court’s ruling strikes down the Trump administration’s 2018 ban, one of the few gun control measures that emerged after the Las Vegas mass shooting that killed 58 people and left hundreds wounded. That shooter used rifles equipped with bump stocks to unleash gunfire at rates normally requiring an army surplus catalogue and several international treaties.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, rather unimpressed with her colleagues’ delving into the fine print of federal gun law, wrote in dissent that the decision “will have deadly consequences.” She also pointed out that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (a name that increasingly sounds less like a law enforcement agency and more like a rock band from the 1980s) had reasonably interpreted the law by treating bump stock-equipped rifles as practically indistinguishable from machine guns.
“When I said nothing could surprise me anymore, I hadn’t counted on bump stocks being considered artisanal gun enhancements,” said no ATF agent ever.
Gun rights groups, for their part, applauded the decision as a victory for the Second Amendment and the fundamental American right to accessorize. Gun control advocates, meanwhile, were last seen sighing heavily and reviewing the dictionary definition of “automatic.”
In the end, the Supreme Court has assured Americans that while the legislative branch may struggle to do anything, the judicial branch will always be there to clarify the precise legal difference between rapid and very rapid gunfire.
Truly, the court shoots first and asks semantic questions later.