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Supreme Court Puts 'Countless Lives in Danger' by Striking Down Bump Stock Ban
"Gun violence is already the leading cause of death for children and teens in our country," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib. "This will make mass shootings deadlier."
Jun 14, 2024
Gun control advocates and progressive lawmakers responded to Friday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the Trump administration's bump stock ban with one overwhelming message: This decision will cost lives.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Garland v. Cargill that the administration of former President Donald Trump exceeded its power when it banned bump stocks after a gunman used assault rifles equipped with the accessory during the massacre of 60 people and wounding of more than 400 others at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017. It was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives' (ATF) final rule banning bump stocks went into effect in March 2019.
"This is a horrible decision that will undoubtedly result in more gun deaths," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said on social media. "The bump stock ban had bipartisan support following the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history—this ruling is another example of SCOTUS legislating from the bench, against the will of the people."
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) lamented that "gun violence is already the leading cause of death for children and teens in our country. This will make mass shootings deadlier."
"SCOTUS has blood on its hands," she added. "This unhinged Supreme Court needs to stop legislating from the bench."
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) decried what he called "a disgraceful decision by the Corrupt Supreme Court that will result in the death of more Americans, especially children."
"Congress must act swiftly to pass a bump stocks ban," he added. "Time to organize."
Gun control activists also condemned the ruling.
"The majority of justices today sided with the gun lobby instead of the safety of the American people. This is a shameful decision," said Giffords Law Center litigation director Esther Sanchez-Gomez. "Congress must act to undo the damage and make clear that bump stocks, and all automatic conversion devices, are illegal under federal law."
The group Everytown said: "Bump stocks were designed to skirt the law and mimic automatic fire. There is no reason anyone should be able to easily convert a weapon to fire 800 rounds per minute. Machine guns don't belong in our communities."
"The Supreme Court has put countless lives in danger," the group added. "Congress can and should right this deadly wrong by passing bipartisan legislation to ban bump stocks that has already been introduced in the House and Senate."
Stasha Rhodes, campaign director at the Supreme Court reform group United for Democracy, said in a statement that "today's ruling out of the Supreme Court is reckless and dangerous."
"In Las Vegas and communities across the country, we've seen how bump stocks can turn community gatherings into tragic, waking nightmares. That's why even the Trump administration banned them in 2017," she continued. "But this morning, the MAGA justices on the Supreme Court showed us the full extent of their radical, right-wing vision on firearms: machine guns everywhere."
"Our communities deserve the freedom to live safely in their communities," Rhodes added. "They deserve to have elected representatives, not politicians in robes, making policy decisions that impact their day-to-day lives."
Bump stocks are fitted in place of a rifle's butt stock and allow a semiautomatic weapon to fire multiple rounds with a single pull of the trigger by harnessing the gun's recoil energy. They greatly increase a gun's rate of fire at the expense of its accuracy, making semiautomatic weapons behave similar to machine guns.
Congress outlawed machine guns under the National Firearms Act of 1934, which defined such firearms as "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." The Gun Control Act of 1968 expanded this definition to include accessories that could be used to convert a weapon into a machine gun.
"A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machine gun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in Garland v. Cargill. "Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will fire only one shot for every 'function of the trigger.'"
Writing for the dissenting liberal members of the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said: "Today, the court puts bump stocks back in civilian hands. To do so, it casts aside Congress' definition of 'machine gun' and seizes upon one that is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the statutory text and unsupported by context or purpose."
"Today's decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences," she added. "The majority's artificially narrow definition hamstrings the government's efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter."
Case plaintiff Michael Cargill, a Texas gun store owner, celebrated the ruling.
"Breaking news, I did it," Cargill said in a video posted on social media. "I beat them in the United States Supreme Court."
"I stood and fought, and because of this, the bump stock case is gonna be the case that saves everything," he continued. "It's gonna stop the ATF from coming after your brace, the triggers, all different parts and pieces that they're trying to ban."
"As always, more guns equals less crime," Cargill added. "You go out there and you buy yourself a gun. Better yet, get yourself a bump stock."
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US Elections at Risk of Political Violence as Guns and Distrust in Democracy Spread
"Ahead of next year's elections, it is critical that states take the steps recommended in the report to ensure that elections remain free from violence," said a co-author.
Sep 18, 2023
A report released Monday highlights how state laws across the U.S. fail to protect voters and election workers from the "growing risk of gun violence" tied to increasing firearm deregulation and sales as well as American political leaders fomenting distrust in democracy.
"The 2024 election will unfold in a transformed legal environment," warns Guns and Voting, the new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and Giffords—a gun violence prevention group founded by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who survived being shot in the head.
The publication explains that "in 2010, only two states let people carry concealed firearms in public without a permit or background check. Now, 27 states allow 'permitless carry.' While other states have strengthened gun regulations during this period, the Supreme Court has threatened their ability to do so."
"With more guns and more political polarization and violence, states need strong laws to limit risk."
"Last year, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the court forced the six states with the strongest concealed carry laws, as well as Washington, D.C., to weaken their restrictions," the document details. "And it announced an entirely new test for evaluating the constitutionality of gun regulations, inviting a wave of litigation."
In the states impacted by the right-wing justices' majority opinion—which critics of denounced as "devastating"—applications to carry guns in public climbed after the ruling, and there have been over 450 related court decisions issued since June 2022.
U.S. gun sales and violence have also soared in recent years. As more than 42 million guns were sold in 2020 and 2021, there was a 15% jump in gun-related incidents, a 34% rise in nonfatal gun injuries, and a 28% increase in gun deaths from March 1, 2020, and February 28, 2021.
"Meanwhile, American democracy has been facing new and unnerving pressure as the result of a growing election denial movement," the report notes. "In 2020, states expanded voting by mail and early voting due to the coronavirus pandemic. Endeavoring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump and his allies launched massive disinformation campaigns targeting this expanded access to voting, claiming that the election was 'rigged' and that election administration officials were engaged in fraud."
"This election denial movement has spread beyond Trump and reached into state and local elections, fueled by conspiracy theories about mail voting, drop boxes, election officials, poll workers, and ballot counting," the report continues. "From its inception, threats of political violence marked this movement. The most prominent example, of course, was the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol."
Now, Trump is the top Republican presidential candidate for 2024, despite arguments that inciting the January 6 insurrection constitutionally disqualifies him from holding office again. Trump also faces four ongoing criminal cases, two of which are connected to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The GOP nominee is expected to face Democratic President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection next year. While Biden has taken some limited executive action on guns and signed a bipartisan safety bill last year, Democrats' efforts to pass sweeping federal gun control and voting rights legislation have been thwarted by congressional Republicans.
"With more guns and more political polarization and violence, states need strong laws to limit risk," the new report argues. "In Bruen, the Supreme Court recognized that prohibitions on guns in 'sensitive places'—and specifically in 'polling places'—were 'presumptively lawful.' Yet today only 12 states and Washington, D.C., prohibit both open and concealed carry of firearms at poll sites."
"Ironically, the states with the strongest gun regulations—which had restricted the ability to carry guns in public generally, rather than prohibiting guns in particular locations—were made most vulnerable in the wake of Bruen," the publication warns. "In fact, only one of the six states that had their laws struck down by the decision specifically prohibited guns in polling places at the time of the decision."
After laying out in detail the recent changes in U.S. gun control legislation, how disinformation has sown the seeds of political violence, and increases in extremism and gun violence—including mass shootings—the report offers policy recommendations.
"States should broadly prohibit firearms, including concealed carry, at and around all voting sites—including drop boxes—and places where votes are being counted and elections are being administered," the document asserts. "In addition to prohibiting guns wherever protected voting or election activity occurs, states can strengthen voter intimidation laws."
Guns and Voting co-author Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy at Giffords Law Center, echoed the report's call to action in a statement Monday.
"Though American elections have remained safe and secure, both political and gun violence pose significant risks to the safety of voters and people bravely conducting our elections," she said. "The 2024 presidential election brings an unprecedented confluence of factors that heighten these risks."
"Ahead of next year's elections, it is critical that states take the steps recommended in the report to ensure that elections remain free from violence," Anderman added. "Our leaders must act to protect our democracy."
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US Supreme Court Refuses to Block Assault Weapons Ban in Illinois
"The Supreme Court once again reaffirms the rights of legislators and local officials to pass gun safety laws," said one advocate.
May 17, 2023
State and local laws banning the sale of assault weapons will stand in Illinois for the time being, following the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal on Wednesday to temporarily block the measures while pro-gun groups appeal them in lower courts.
The high court did not disclose how each justice voted or explain their reasoning for the decision, releasing only a brief statement saying that the request for an injunction was denied.
A gun store in Naperville, Illinois joined the National Association for Gun Rights in challenging a local ordinance that blocks the sale of assault weapons, defined as 26 firearms and other weapons that meet certain criteria. The law went into effect in January after being passed last August, a month after seven people were killed and nearly 50 were injured in a mass shooting in Highland Park, 35 miles away from Naperville.
The lawsuit also challenges the Protect Illinois Communities Act, which also went into force in January and bans the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines across the state.
The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals has taken up the case and is scheduled to hear arguments on June 29.
"This is an important victory in the fight to end gun violence as the U.S. continues to deal with multiple mass shootings."
The gun store and pro-gun group cited two landmark rulings by the Supreme Court, including District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to possess a firearm for "lawful purposes," independent of serving in a militia; and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which held that courts must consider the gun regulations that were in effect when the Constitution was written when they decide whether a gun law should stand.
The latter ruling expanded access to firearms last year even as gun violence surpassed vehicle accidents as the leading cause of death among children in the United States.
The plaintiffs claimed that "there is no historical analogue to such a ban" as the ones passed in Illinois. State Attorney General Kwame Raoul countered in a court brief that the types of guns targeted by the laws, such as one used by the shooter in Highland Park, fall well outside the Constitution's protections for "firearms that are 'commonly used' for self-defense."
The gun control group Brady said Wednesday's development at the Supreme Court, while not the final word on the case, was "an important victory in the fight to end gun violence."
\u201c\ud83d\udea8BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to block Illinois' and Naperville's assault weapons ban from being enforced. \n\nThis is an important victory in the fight to end gun violence as the US continues to deal with multiple mass shootings.\nhttps://t.co/U8Z3AeJK3Q\u201d— Brady | United Against Gun Violence (@Brady | United Against Gun Violence) 1684340876
"This is a great victory for Americans and all of us working to protect our children from the gun violence epidemic facing our nation," said Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, senior adviser to advocacy group Giffords. "With this ruling the Supreme Court once again reaffirms the rights of legislators and local officials to pass gun safety laws."
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