On June 14, 2024, the United States Supreme Court in its decision in
Cargill v. Merrick Garland, et al, 22-976
struck down the ATF’s bump stock rule in a 6-3 decision written by
Justice Thomas. Tennessee Firearms Association and the Tennessee
Firearms Foundation joined Gun Owners of American and Gun Owners
Foundation by submitting an
amicus brief that urged the Court strike down the ATF’s bump stock rule.
Justice Thomas started the decision as follows:
Congress has long restricted access to “ ‘machinegun[s],’ ”a category
of firearms defined by the ability to “shoot, automatically more than
one shot . . . by a single function of the trigger.” 26 U. S. C.
§5845(b); see also 18 U. S. C. §922(o). Semiautomatic firearms, which
require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not
machineguns. This case asks whether a bump stock—an accessory for a
semiautomatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the
trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire)—converts the rifle
into a “machinegun.” We hold that it does not and therefore affirm.
Cargill, p. 5.
The Court’s opinion notes, without calling it such, that ATF once
again acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner when it had ruled for
decades that these bump stock accessories did not convert semiautomatic
firearms into statutory machineguns and then, as a result of an incident
involving the possession of bump stocks by a murderer, the ATF reversed
course and changed its mind.
The question in this case is whether a bump stock transforms a
semiautomatic rifle into a “machinegun,” as defined by §5845(b). For
many years, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(ATF) took the position that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump
stocks were not machineguns under the statute. On more than 10 separate
occasions over several administrations, ATF consistently concluded that
rifles equipped with bump stocks cannot “automatically” fire more than
one shot “by a single function of the trigger.” See App. 16–68. In April
2017, for example, ATF explained that a rifle equipped with a bump
stock does not “operat[e] automatically” because “forward pressure must
be applied with the support hand to the forward handguard.” Id., at 66.
And, because the shooter slides the rifle forward in the stock “to fire
each shot, each succeeding shot fir[es] with a single trigger function.”
Id., at 67.
ATF abruptly reversed course in response to a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. …
Cargill, p. 7.
When compared with other Second Amendment decisions that the Court had issued in Heller (2008), McDonald (2010) and Bruen
(2022), one aspect of this case that is noteworthy is that the Court
here relies on no prior decisions for its ruling. Indeed, the Court’s
ruling is almost entirely a fact-based analysis of how a semiautomatic
firearm that has a bumpstock functions. Ultimately, the Supreme Court
agreed with the en banc decision of the 5th Circuit Court of
appeals when the Supreme Court concluded that the ATF exceeding its
authority by reversing course and attempting to rewrite (something that
the ATF refers to as “clarifying”) the statutory definition of a
machinegun:
Section 5845(b) defines a “machinegun” as any weapon capable of
firing “automatically more than one shot . . . by a single function of
the trigger.” 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.
Cargill, p. 10.
This decision is yet another example of how politicized agencies,
both federal and state, are purposefully and intentionally violating our
constitutionally protected rights. They often do so with the blessings
if not the mandates from the chief executives (president or governors)
and/or with the blessing of the legislative branches. Indeed, over the
last 16 years, to the extent that the rights that are protected by the
Second Amendment are being protected at all, those protections seem to
be coming solely from the judicial branch at this time. Certainly, if
you look at the last 14 years in Tennessee under Governors Haslam and
Lee and the era of the Republican super majority in the Legislature one
can reach no conclusion other than these elected officials have,
collectively, breached their oaths of office and have trampled, often
intentionally, the right that is expressly declared to be beyond the
authority of any government entity to infringe.
