Listen Live: Supreme Court hears case over ban on bump stocks for firearms
CBSFeb 28
SCOTUS Hears Challenge to Bump Stock Ban
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The Facts
The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on Wednesday heard oral arguments in Garland v. Cargill, which is a challenge to a Trump-era ban on bump stocks — devices that make it easier to rapidly and accurately fire a semi-automatic rifle.
Michael Cargill, a gun store owner, argued that bump stocks don't change the main function of a semi-automatic weapon enough to make them illegal, while the Biden administration says bump stocks meet the definition of a machine gun, which are prohibited for personal ownership.
The Spin
Right narrative
The ATF's decision to treat bump stocks as machine guns is unconstitutional. Only Congress can make laws, and the administrative state is overreaching by suddenly defining devices that were legal from 2008 to 2017 as bannable. If gun-control advocates on the left want to push a ban on bump stock, they're free to do so through the legislative process — but gun rights advocates will then be able to challenge that on Second Amendment grounds.
Left narrative
It's unconscionable that those on the right side of the political aisle in the most violent industrialized nation on Earth are willing to allow these lethal devices to proliferate over a question of grammar. The ATF has the power to define what's a machine gun, and that means bump stocks are as bannable under this definition. If the conservative-majority SCOTUS doesn't rule that way, it'll be another sad chapter in the fight against excess gun deaths.
