(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Friday invalidated a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, ruling the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority in creating the regulation.
The 6-3 opinion was authored by Justice Clarence Thomas. The court’s three liberal justices, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented.
The court ruled a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a “machinegun” under federal law because it does not fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger.”
Thomas added, “even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically.'”
The ATF rule was created in the wake of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history when a gunman opened fire at Las Vegas music festival in 2017. Fifty-eight people were killed and more than 850 others wounded.
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