The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the bump stock ban on June 14, 2024, in Garland v. Cargill. In 2017, Trump directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to enact a ban in reaction to the massacre at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. Gun rights proponents declared the act an unconstitutional power grab that created thousands of felons out of thin air without legislative support. The use of bump stocks in that horrible crime is highly suspect even after months of investigation.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion for the court, “We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot by a single function of the trigger. And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically.’ ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns.”

Oregon Firearms Federation (OFF) reports this as the third major pro-rights victory in two days including the court victory against Biden’s rule to close ‘gun show loophole’ as efforts to entrap any gun owner who transferred a firearm.

OFF praises this victory as common sense. “Given that the dedicated public servants over at ATF have actually determined that a shoelace is a machine gun this is a tremendous victory for sanity, common sense, and the all too rare notion that words actually mean something. Remember, the bump stock ban did not say bump stocks identified as machine guns. It said they were machine guns.”

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

“The firearms community has long argued over the value of bump stocks and some have expressed the opinion that they are pointless gadgets that serve no useful purpose. Some even felt that their prohibition was no big deal,” OFF disagrees. “ While the only real purpose they may serve is turning money into noise, if bureaucrats, even the President of the United States, can arbitrarily change the meaning of words, nothing is safe. It is a short distance between saying sliding plastic parts are machine guns to saying AR-15’s are machine guns. In fact, we have seen this very issue arise with the just overturned ban on stabilizing braces, the reinvention of what defines a ‘firearm’ for the purpose of mandatory registration.”

The ruling on this case is a good indication of where the Supreme Court is at today. Whether it will remain the same for the case against Oregon’s SB 554 passed in 2021, remains to be seen. This law levies fines for failure to report a stolen gun with a serial number – you can be held responsible for any crime committed with guns that have been stolen from you, and your liability when you lawfully transfer a firearm is exponentially higher. In addition, under this law, you need to keep any gun you are not carrying locked up and useless, your rights to allow a minor to use one of your firearms are now extremely restricted and complicated by conflicting language, and you may no longer carry a firearm with a concealed handgun license in the Portland Airport Terminal, in the state capitol building and the grounds of any school that chooses to make its property off limits. There remains ongoing debate over contradicting language within the bill and what proponents said it would do.


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2024-06-19 11:56:56

Last Update: 2024-06-19 23:34:06