The Bump Stock Case: Is SCOTUS a Public Health Menace (Part II)?

The latest blockbuster decision from SCOTUS is "the bump stock case," Garland v. Cargill, U.S. No. 22-976 (June 14). There isn't much to add to the voluminous media coverage of this case, in which the six conservatives on the Court struck down a 2018 BATF regulation that banned bump stocks because they turned semiautomatic rifles into machineguns, which Congress severely restricted in 1934 (see definition of machinegun in National Firearms Act of 1934, 26 U. S. C. §5845(b)). The majority (in a highly technical and narrow decision by Justice Thomas*) disagreed with BATF and held that bump-stock-equipped rifles are not machineguns. To be fair, the Obama administration came to the same conclusion when it decided against a regulation that would have classified bump-stock-equipped rifles as machineguns. 

Writing for the three liberal justices in dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote:

A machinegun does not fire itself.  The important question under the statute is how a person can fire it.  A weapon is a “machinegun” when a shooter can (1) “by a single function of the trigger,” (2) shoot “automatically more than one shot, without manually reloading.”  26 U. S. C. §5845(b).  The plain language of that definition refers most obviously to a rifle like an M16, where a single pull of the trigger provides continuous fire as long as the shooter maintains backward pressure on the trigger.  The definition of “machinegun” also includes “any part designed and intended . . . for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun.”  Ibid.  That language naturally covers devices like bump stocks, which “conver[t]” semiautomatic rifles so that a single pull of the trigger provides continuous fire as long as the shooter maintains forward pressure on the gun. 

This is not a hard case.  All of the textual evidence points to the same interpretation.  A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle is a machinegun because (1) with a single pull of the trigger, a shooter can (2) fire continuous shots without any human input beyond maintaining forward pressure.  The majority looks to the internal mechanism that initiates fire, rather than the human act of the shooter’s initial pull, to hold that a “single function of the trigger” means a reset of the trigger mechanism.  Its interpretation requires six diagrams and an animation to decipher the meaning of the statutory text.  Then, shifting focus from the internal mechanism of the gun to the perspective of the shooter, the majority holds that continuous forward pressure is too much human input for bump-stock-enabled continuous fire to be “automatic.” [emphasis added]

Justice Sotomayor rejects the majority's technical analysis with her customary flair:

Today, the Court puts bump stocks back in civilian hands.  To do so, it casts aside Congress’s definition of “machinegun” and seizes upon one that is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the statutory text and unsupported by context or purpose.  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.  A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires “automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.”  §5845(b).  Because I, like Congress, call that a machinegun, I respectfully dissent. 

At a minimum, doesn't the 6-3 split in this case suggest that it's plausible -- even reasonable --  to define bump-stock-enhanced rifles as machineguns, even if there is a plausible -- even reasonable -- contrary argument? Given the room for argument, isn't this just the sort of case in which generalist judges, with or without technical drawings and a video, should defer to the expertise of the agency (with or without Chevron)?

Last Father's Day, I posted about the Supreme Court's obstinate Second Amendment jurisprudence ("2nd Amendment thoughts -- The Constitution is not a suicide pact (or is it?)" (June 18, 2023).) Breaking no new ground whatsoever, I wrote that gun violence is not only a criminal-justice matter, it's also a matter of public health law. The statistics are stunning. So far this year, there have been 225 mass shootings in this country. Granted, few if any involved a bump-stock-equipped rifle, but the 2017 shooting at a Las Vegas music festival (in which 58 people were killed and over 500 injured by a shooter using weapons enhanced by bump stocks) demonstrates the lethality of bump stocks. And with over 700,000 of these things already in circulation (ABC News (June 14, 2024)), to build on Justice Sotomayor's analogy, we are all sitting ducks. 

So this Father's Day, I revisit the issue of gun violence and ask last year's question one more time: Don't we owe more to our children (and their children) than a world in which assault rifles are legal in 40 states and anyone with a driver's license can turn their assault rifle into a machinegun?

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* There is a random connection between machineguns (especially the Thompson machinegun) and Dallas. The father of the late Cary Maguire -- Dallas oilman and philanthropist par excellence -- supplied Allied forces with the Tommy gun during WWII:

NY Times, Nov. 11, 1966 (obituary, J. Russell Maguire, (behind a paywall)).