US supreme court strikes down federal ban on ‘bump stock’ devices for guns
June 14, 2024 in News by RBN Staff
Source: TheGuardian.com
Banned after the 2017 shooting in Las Vegas that killed 60, bump stocks make a regular gun fire almost as fast as a machine gun
Gun control organizations warn that bump stocks make guns more deadly by allowing multiple shots with just one pull of the trigger. Photograph: Allen Breed/AP
The US supreme court has struck down a federal ban on “bump stocks”, the devices which can vamp up semi-automatic firearms to discharge ammunition almost as rapidly as machine guns and that have been behind some of the most devastating mass shootings in recent history.
The top court’s ruling in Garland v Cargill nullifies the Trump administration’s 2018 regulation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) which ordered anyone who owned a bump stock to destroy it or hand it over to federal agents. The rule was passed in the after the devastating 2017 mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas, in which a gunman fired more than 1,000 rounds, killing 60 people and injuring almost 500.
After the ban, Michael Cargill, a US army veteran who owned a gun store in Austin, Texas, gave up several bump stocks in his possession. He then challenged the regulation before the supreme court.
The scrapping of the ban will dismay gun control organizations such as Sandy Hook Promise, which has warned that bump stocks make guns all the more deadly by allowing multiple shots to be fired every second with just one pull of the trigger. Public reaction was so strong after the Las Vegas disaster that even the National Rifle Association, a body notorious for opposing gun regulations, joined the call for the add-ons to be taken out of circulation.
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