Federal bump stock ban is overturned by the Supreme Court, which sides with Austin gun dealer

Central Texas Gun Works owner Michael Cargill filed a lawsuit against the prohibition. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favour of him.

On October 4, 2017, a bump fire stock at Good Guys Gun Shop in Orem, Utah, was installed on a semi-automatic rifle.

After a long battle, an Austin gun store owner was able to overturn a federal ban on bump stocks on Friday with a 6-3 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Semi-automatic rifles with bump stocks may fire hundreds of rounds in a minute. According to the court, laws prohibiting machine weapons do not permit the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to include bump stocks. Owners of bump stocks were required by the overturned ATF rule to destroy their weapons or turn them in to the agency in order to avoid facing criminal charges.

After turning in two bump stocks to the ATF, Michael Cargill, the proprietor of Central Texas Gun Works and a vocal supporter of gun rights in Texas, filed the lawsuit. He contended that the ATF overreached in outlawing bump stocks because it misclassified them as machine guns. With the backing of the campaigning organisation New Civil Liberties Alliance, he filed the lawsuit.

“This is a huge win for the entire nation.” Cargill told The Texas Tribune, “Whether you’re pro-gun or anti-gun, it’s just not about firearms.” This concerns the decision made by an administrative agency to enact legislation, which is beyond the authority of said agencies. Congress is the only body that can take that action.

During the Trump administration, the ATF started classifying bump stocks as “machineguns” in reaction to the horrific mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip in 2017.

Clarence Thomas penned the majority opinion, saying, “We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a’machinegun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.” Furthermore, even if it could, it wouldn’t act in a “automatic” manner.

Cargill claimed that the National Rifle Association was among those “no one wanted to help,” forcing him to take on this action as the lone plaintiff. Cargill pointed out that individuals he anticipated would back Donald Trump “didn’t want to go against Trump” at the time of the ban.

I don’t give a damn who’s in control, who’s in office, or who the president is, Cargill declared. This was incorrect. I intended to resist it. I’m happy I took the chance. I worked alone on everything.

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Although some proponents of gun rights have advised Cargill to have adopted “a more Second Amendment stance,” Cargill maintains that this issue is about the boundaries of executive agencies’ power rather than the Second Amendment itself.

He stated, “I needed to approach this case intelligently, applying our minds here and not viewing everything as just about taking away the Second Amendment.”

Cargill started to receive additional support once President Joe Biden took office and the case kept making its way up to the Supreme Court.

Gun control organisations were dealt a blow by the decision; many of them expressed displeasure and worry on Friday.