GIFFORDS Applauds Court Ruling Upholding Federal Bump Stock Ban
Washington DC — GIFFORDS Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence applauded the DC Circuit Court’s decision to deny en banc review in the challenge to the federal bump stock ban. After the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) under President Trump moved to regulate the lethal conversion devices known as bump stocks like machine guns. When a weapon is modified with a bump stock, the shooter can fire at a rate of 400 to 800 rounds per minute, mirroring the rate of fire of fully automatic weapons that fire multiple bullets with a single trigger pull.
Esther Sanchez-Gomez, Litigation Director, GIFFORDS Law Center:
“Bump stocks are designed to convert semi automatic weapons into fully automatic weapons. Bump stocks are responsible for the most deadly mass shooting in American history: at the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Festival, 60 people were killed by bump stock equipped firearms. Fully automatic firearms —and conversion devices—are already heavily regulated under federal law, with good reason. ATF’s classification of bump stocks as machine guns is simply common sense, and in line with congressional intent to regulate workarounds to the machine gun regulations. GIFFORDS Law Center will continue to defend ATF’s classification, including before the Supreme Court.”
In August 2022, a panel of the DC Circuit affirmed a district court decision dismissing a challenge to the bump stock rule. The DC Circuit held that bump stocks fall within the definition of a “machine gun” under federal law. The court relied on “traditional tools of statutory interpretation” and concluded that ATF’s rule defining bump stocks as machine guns was “the best interpretation of ‘machine gun’ under the governing statutes.” In spite of this, a panel of the Fifth Circuit recently struck down the rule; the government has sought review by the Supreme Court to address this mistaken decision and correct a harmful circuit split on this issue.