WASHINGTON, D.C., June 14, 2024 – Today the Supreme Court released its decision in Garland v. Cargill, ruling 6–3 along party lines that semiautomatic firearms equipped with bump stocks cannot be regulated as machineguns, despite the fact that bump stocks allow them to fire just as fast.
The case rests on inane technicalities about whether the trigger on a gun is still being pulled to fire a shot, even if the bump stock automates this process without requiring a shooter to pull the trigger additional times with their finger. Justice Thomas argues for the majority that this distinction is sufficient to prohibit the ATF from regulating bump stocks to prevent the extra harm they allow.
Justice Sotomayor, dissenting on behalf of the three liberal justices, chastises the majority’s illogic, writing: “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” Insisting “this is not a hard case,” she states how obvious it is that any weapon that can file multiple shots with a single pull of the trigger should be considered a machinegun per Congress’s own language. She also calls each justice in the majority out individually for abandoning their textualism principles to arrive at their conclusion.
Jake Faleschini, Justice Program Director at Alliance for Justice, issued the following statement:
“This Supreme Court today condemns more innocent people to die. Their decision defies logic and common sense to ensure the deadliest weapons are still easily accessible across the country. Notably, this was not even a Second Amendment case; it’s not even mentioned in the decision. This is just the conservative justices ignoring the will of Congress and voters to hand another win to the NRA and the billionaires who bought their votes on the bench. There will be blood on their hands as our schools and streets continue to be needlessly ravaged by mass shootings made deadlier by weapons of war.”