By Clayton Vickers - 05/21/24

If the Supreme Court rules that bump stocks aren’t machine guns later this summer, it could quickly open an unfettered marketplace of newer, more powerful rapid-fire devices.

The Trump administration, in a rare break from gun rights groups, quickly banned bump stocks after the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert that was the deadliest in U.S. history. In the ensuing years, gun rights groups challenged the underlying rationale that bump stocks are effectively machine guns — culminating in a legal fight now before the Supreme Court.

Justices appeared divided on the issue during oral arguments in February, and they are on the clock to hand down a ruling by June. How they ultimately define machine guns will have a sweeping impact not only on bump stocks but a whole class of similar rapid-fire devices effectively banned in the U.S.

David Pucino, legal director at Giffords Law Center, said lower courts are currently treating bump stocks and similar devices like machine guns, which are banned.

“The use case for new rapid-fire devices lower courts are considering is that somebody wants to have a machine gun, and the law won’t let them have one,” Pucino said.

If the Supreme Court does overturn the ban, he said, it “would be very, very dangerous for public safety.”

Bump stocks, which gained national attention after the shooter in Las Vegas used the devices to kill 60 and injure hundreds more, are inaccurate, sporadic and difficult to control, jolting a gun back and forth. Gun enthusiasts have created new rapid-fire devices without the jolting drawbacks of bump fire.

The logic of legalization for all of the devices is basically the same: It’s not technically a machine gun. And if it’s not named, it’s not banned.

Circuit courts have come to different conclusions on whether a bump stock is legally a machine gun, and the Trump-era ban remains in place pending the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cargill v. Garland, which pits a gun dealer, Michael Cargill, against the Department of Justice.

The conservative majority of the 5th Circuit called the language of machine gun bans “egregiously ambiguous,” while the more liberal D.C. Circuit said it was the plaintiff’s definition that was “unworkable, internally inconsistent, and counterintuitive.”

If the Supreme Court undoes the bump stock ban, it would be up to Congress to decide how — or whether — to regulate rapid-fire devices, which have proliferated through the gray market since 2017.