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“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck” -Justice Sotomayor in her oral dissent.
This week, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Former President Trump’s ban on bump stocks. What is a bump stock? A bump stock is a gun attachment that allows semi-automatic firearms to act like a machine gun, firing cartridges in rapid succession. The Trump Administration banned bump stocks, following the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, where the shooter killed 60 people, and wounded 413, after firing 1,000 rounds using a bump stock. The Trump administration banned bump stocks, ruling them illegal under Federal Law because they operated like Machine Guns, which are illegal.
I exercise extreme caution (strict scrutiny, if you will) when criticizing the Supreme Court, but in this case, the Court dangerously missed the mark. This ruling by the Supreme Court effectively legalizes civilians owning machine guns and has the potential to make the gun violence epidemic exponentially worse.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Thomas, makes a remarkably weak argument that dismisses common sense and reasoning in favor of an argument rooted in the mechanics of guns, not the effect of a firearm. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor expresses her pure astonishment with her Conservative colleague’s pure ignorance of common sense.
While I do concede that bump stocks are not the exact same as a machine gun and do have some mechanical differences, bump stocks allow semi-automatic firearms to operate in a manner that is nearly identical to a machine gun and would seemingly meet the definition of a machine gun established under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (“any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”) For me, and most people, a reading of this would include bump stocks, which are designed to automatically shoot.
Furthermore, the Majority blatantly ignores Congress’s intention to regulate machine guns. When Congress sought to regulate these firearms, they did not do so on the basis of the physical and technical elements of a firearm, but instead, they did so intending to regulate how these firearms operate. When attached, bump stocks allow semi-automatic guns to function in a deadly way that is effectively that of a machine gun. The Majority’s inability to consider this basic fact shows a dangerous level of textualism that has the potential to further torpedo our rights and values.
While the court’s decision has the potential to be destructive, the court is not solely to blame. Years of inaction on the gun violence epidemic, led by Republicans in Congress has directly led to this moment.
While the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 was a step in the right direction, it does little to truly curb the gun violence epidemic. Every time Democrats have tried to pass significant common-sense Gun Control at the federal level, Republicans, fearing National Rifle Association (NRA) retaliation, have blocked it, lying to their base, saying that the government is trying to take away their guns.
What Justice Thomas did get right in his opinion is that Congress should have acted. Congress could have amended the law to explicitly include bump stocks, and Congress should be taking real action on gun violence. It is time to stop playing political games with gun violence, and it is beyond time for Republicans to be honest to the American people and work with President Biden and Senate Democrats to pass Universal Background Checks, Red Flag Laws, and the GOSAFE Act.
In 2022, there were 48,000 firearm-related deaths in the United States. Gun control cannot unilaterally prevent every one of these deaths, but it is my sincere belief that common-sense gun control can prevent many of these deaths. For too long, the NRA and its allies have lied to the American people about what gun control is and what it seeks to do. Now is not the time for deception, deceit, and more lying. Now is the time to take action for every single person who has been a victim of gun violence.
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