By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The U.S. Supreme Court announced Friday it will hear a challenge to the Trump-era ban on “bump stocks” which was instituted following the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.
The case is not specifically linked to the Second Amendment, but is instead a challenge to whether Donald Trump’s administration had the legal authority to impose such a ban, according to NBC News.
The most intriguing aspect of this case is that the Biden administration is defending the ban, after spending years trying to undo everything Trump did during his four years in office.
CNN is reporting arguments in the case will likely be heard early in 2024, with a ruling coming down “by June.” As is typical of cases relating to firearms, however, the ruling could be held until the final days of the court’s current session, which ends in June.
The timing of the court’s announcement got the attention of USA Today, which noted, “The decision to take the case came days after a gunman carried out the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. this year, killing 18 people in Maine.”
However, that incident did not involve the use of a bump stock, which is an after-market attachment that increases the rate of fire by utilizing the recoil of a semiautomatic rifle or AR-type pistol.
The actual ban, NBC recalled, did not take effect until 2019, after the Supreme Court “declined to block it.” Trump’s ban infuriated many in the firearms community. His action opened the door for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to reinterpret a federal law enacted in 1986 dealing with machine guns by including bump stocks in the definition, USA Today explained.
As CNN reported, the case will look at whether the ATF exceeded its authority by including bump stocks in the machine gun definition under the National Firearms Act.
