The Las Vegas Shooting: A Demonstration of the Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms at the United States Supreme Court and the Case against Semiautomatic Weapons
It’s an argument played to by the Supreme Court, which has an inclination to roll back agency powers. A decision is expected in the summer.
The challengers focus on earlier ATF regulations that did not ban bump stocks under the same law, and they see the bump stock ban as another example of an administrative agency enacting a new regulation that criminalizes conduct without explicit congressional authorization.
Machine guns were developed by the military for battle in the late 1800s, but by the early 1920s they became the weapon of choice for gangsters like Al Capone. Congress tried to ban automatic weapons to stop the constant terror on the streets. In the year of17, a single shooting at a Las Vegas concert that killed 60 people and wounded 400 others was followed by a series of similar attacks in other countries.
Yet another gun case at the Supreme Court Wednesday. This time the Second Amendment right to bear arms is nowhere in sight. Rather, the question is the legality of a federal regulation banning devices that modify semiautomatic weapons to speed the firing mechanism.
The regulation was not created by the Biden administration. It was created by the President in response to the Las Vegas shooting which killed 60 people and wounded 400 others, all in 11 minutes.
It was not a machine gun. The shooter was armed with 14 semiautomatic weapons, modified with bump stocks to generate rapid fire. And the carnage was so horrific that Trump almost immediately ordered the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to ban the sale and possession of these devices that the ATF now says convert otherwise legal semi-automatic guns into illegal machine guns.
Machine guns were developed at the end of the 1800s for use as military weapons in battle. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, they were used for criminal activities by mobsters. The National Firearms Act of 1934 banned machine guns.
The New Guns — Can Bump Stocks Be Used as a Weapon? A Question for Justice Samuel Alito and Mark Chenoweth
Mark Chenoweth, president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, the conservative group that is challenging the bump stock regulation, contends that bump stocks do not change the character of a weapon.
Not so, says the government. A standard semiautomatic rifle fires only one shot each time the shooter pulls the trigger but a bump stock converts the gun into a weapon that would allow a shooter “with a single pull of the trigger, to fire at rates of up to 800 bullets per minute.” The government said that if the shooter keeps his finger on his finger rest, he can retain a continuous firing cycle.
In 2018, the federal government banned bump stocks for that reason, but gun enthusiasts have challenged the regulation in court, contending that only Congress has the power to enact such a ban.
Justice Samuel Alito is trying to rescue Mitchell and posed a question: “Can you imagine a legislator saying in favor of banning machine guns but not banning bump stocks?” Is there any reason why a legislator might reach that judgment?”
Justice Clarence Thomas made a similar point to Mitchell, asking, “Why don’t you simply then look backwards and say that the nature of the firing mechanism has changed; thus, the nature of the trigger has changed?”
“What’s changed, though, is the rate of fire,” replied Mitchell. “And it’s still one shot per function of the trigger, even though the shots are coming out of the barrel a lot faster than they were before.”
Mitchell told him yes. “Bump stocks can help people who have disabilities, who have problems with finger dexterity, people who have arthritis in their fingers.”