The Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 Garland v. Cargill Based purely on statutory text. The National Firearms Act defines a “machine gun” as “any weapon capable of firing multiple times automatically by the single function of the trigger, without manual reloading…” A bump stock is a device that fires a firearm by pulling the trigger and maintaining a guard With forward pressure on the wood, a semi-automatic rifle can fire faster, and the handguard uses the recoil to continue firing.
Judge Clarence Thomas’ opinion contained extensive technical information about how the internal components of an AR-15 rifle work, including diagrams and animated graphics showing the movement of the components. Shooting a rifle with a bump stock still requires the separate function of the trigger for each shot, and it is not “automatic” in that it will not fire without constant manual pressure on the handguard. Never before has a court explained in such detail how a gun works.
While the court’s discussion of how the trigger, sear, isolating switch and bolt interacted during the firing sequence was rather technical, the decision is emblematic of broader implications and has important implications in other contexts.
First, let’s settle it once and for all that semi-automatic guns are not machine guns. This should be a given, but plaintiffs in civil lawsuits in Las Vegas, Highland Park and Mexico claim that AR-15s are machine guns. The court put it this way: “No one disputes that a semiautomatic rifle without a bump stock is not a machine gun because it can fire only one round per ‘trigger pull.'”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, concurring: “Under the statute, a semi-automatic weapon is not a ‘machine gun.’ Take an AR-15-style semi-automatic assault rifle. To rapidly fire an AR-15, the shooter must Quickly pulling the trigger himself. While the term “assault rifle” is misused for semi-automatic rifles, she correctly refers to “the military’s standard M16 assault rifle” as “the quintessential modern ‘machine gun.'”
Second, Judge Sotomayor called the AR-15 a “common semi-automatic rifle.” Recall that the court in Heller Says “commonly used” guns are protected by the Second Amendment. Some courts upholding “assault weapons” bans claim AR-15 is no Although tens of millions of Americans own them, they are still commonly used.
third, Cargill Decisions are made solely on the basis of the statutory text. The ATF does not have a “sacred right to respect.” If it claims to obey, that raises the question of which ATF to obey? The court noted: “On more than 10 different occasions across several administrations, the ATF has unanimously concluded that rifles equipped with bump stocks cannot ‘automatically’ fire more than one round through a single function of the trigger.” Will learn if Chevron Dear ship will sink Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
Fourth, because the statute is clear, courts are not required to decide whether the leniency doctrine applies, although a majority in the Fifth Circuit decision held that it did. This avoids the problem wooden v. united statesJustice Gorsuch supported the rule that criminal laws “should be construed strictly when they are “ambiguous,” while Justice Kavanaugh argued that the rule should apply only when the law is “seriously ambiguous.”
Fifth, the presumed purposes of criminal law do not override its explicit text. Cargill Pointing out that a semi-automatic rifle with a concave and convex stock is not a machine gun, although it allows the rifle to “achieve a high rate of fire.” It added: “A bump-fire stock cannot transform a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun, as would a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger.”
Judge Sotomayor considered the “high rate of fire” important, adding: “When I see a bird walk like a duck, swim like a duck, quack like a duck, I call that bird a duck. .However, nothing in the definition of “machine gun” refers to rate of fire. If a weird weapon is designed to fire automatically with a single function of the trigger, then it’s still a machine gun even if it only fires one round every minute.
Sixth, the decision emphasized that any changes to the criminal law should be made by Congress rather than by executive agencies. The court noted: “Senator Dianne Feinstein…warned that the ATF lacked the statutory authority to ban bumper bumpers and explained that the proposed regulations ‘are at stake.[d] Based on questionable analysis” and “the gun lobby and manufacturers [would] and [ATF’s] Reasoning in court.
Which brings us to the concurrence of Justice Samuel Alito, who said: “There is a simple remedy for the disparate treatment of bump stocks and machine guns. Congress can change the law — if ATF sticks to its previous interpretation, Perhaps this has been done long ago, now that the issue is on the table. how If Congress is willing to do this, it does matter.
In 2017, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee against S. 1916 (Senator Feinstein). As I summarized in my written testimony:
The misnamed Automatic Firearms Prevention Act applies only to semi-automatic weapons, not automatic weapons. Its ban on any part “capable of accelerating the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle” essentially bans any semi-automatic rifle, since simply adjusting the accuracy of the trigger will increase the rate of fire. Since semi-automatic rifles are typically owned for lawful purposes, this would violate the Second Amendment. These provisions are vague and violate due process because there is no way to know or measure what might increase the rate of fire. “Flag device” is not defined. Possession alone, without intentionality required, is punishable by ten years in prison. It would be an unprecedented ban, lacking a grandfather clause or registration amnesty.
Congress has failed to act, in part because the proposed bill would criminalize millions of citizens who own ordinary semiautomatic rifles unrelated to bump stocks. I remember Senator Feinstein replying to me that her bill was drafted by “experts.” That’s true, because the bill would go further than limiting the cushion, which was exactly what the sponsors were aiming for.
There is another fundamental problem lurking here. As I have discussed elsewhere, the National Firearms Act of 1934 did not ban machine guns; rather, it was considered an exercise of Congress’ taxing power. exist Sanzinski v. United States. (1937), the Supreme Court held that the NFA “contains no provisions other than mere registration provisions which clearly support revenue purposes. It is, on its face, a mere taxation measure…”
However, Congress enacted 18 USC § 922(o) in 1986, prohibiting the mere possession of machine guns that were not already owned on the date of enactment. Because it, unlike the rest of the Gun Control Act, contains no reference to interstate or foreign commerce, several circuit court judges—though not a majority in any case—would find it unconstitutional.
One of those judges is now Justice Alito. Objections United States v. Raibal (3th Cir. 1996), he wrote:
used to be United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), Constitutional Freak? Or does this mean that the Commerce Clause still imposes some meaningful limits on congressional power?
The provision of the law challenged in this case, the portion of 18 USC § 922(o) that generally prohibits purely intrastate possession of machine guns, is the closest existing relevant provision to the law that was repealed in 2007. Lopez…This makes it a federal crime to knowingly possess a firearm in a school zone. Both are criminal statutes that govern purely intrastate possession of firearms. Both statutes depart from the pattern of previous federal criminal statutes governing gun ownership and lack a jurisdictional element, that is, they Federal prosecutors are not required to prove that the firearms were possessed in interstate commerce or affected interstate commerce…. In passing both statutes, Congress made no inquiry into the connection between the intrastate activities regulated by these laws and interstate commerce…. This duty…requires us to invalidate the legal provisions at issue here in their present form.
It’s no secret that many lower courts are resisting Lopezas they later boycotted Heller and the bridge. What enumerated powers authorize Congress to prohibit the mere possession of firearms? Prior to the passage of Section 922(o) in 1986, ATF Director Stephen Higgins testified before the House Judiciary Committee that “118,000 [machineguns] It’s all documented in our files…I can count on my fingers the number of cases where these have been used in crimes or violent crimes.
But now the dam is full of water. While the ban on newly registered machine guns will not be reconsidered, a bill to ban bump stocks is certainly in the works. Will they allow registration of up to 520,000 cushions (ATF’s higher estimate)? If they did, what percentage of owners would register them?
There is no doubt that such a bill would do more than just ban bump stocks. Senator Feinstein’s S. 1916 does exactly that – it would prohibit match triggering, which makes the trigger lighter, allowing for faster firing. Sponsors could also ban what Judge Sotomayor called “common semi-automatic rifles,” such as the AR-15.
No matter what the future holds, Cargill It is a good sign that the courts will not be beholden to the administrative state and will follow the words of Chief Justice Marshall: “The judiciary has a duty to make clear what the law is.”
