SCOTUS Declines to Overturn ATF Bump Stock Ban

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) declined Monday to overturn the bump stock ban that took effect in March 2019.

Firearms instructor W. Clark Aposhian filed the suit against the ban, questioning the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’s (ATF) ability and authority to classify a bump stock as a machine gun.

Aposhian sued in 2019, seeking an injunction against the ban, but his case was not successful.

The case was appealed, and Courthouse News reported on May 7, 2020, that the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld the ban.

The Tenth Circuit’s opinion said, in part: “The [ATF] final rule determines that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks are ‘machineguns’ because they ‘function as the result of a self-acting or self-regulating mechanism that allows the firing of multiple rounds” through “a single pull of the trigger,” U.S. Circuit Judge Mary Beck Briscoe, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote for the panel. “Applying Chevron [deference], the statutory definition of ‘machinegun’ is ambiguous, and ATF’s interpretation is reasonable.”

The case was then appealed to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS has left the ban in place.

Aposhian’s attorneys summarized the question presented in the appeal as the following:

Whether the court of appeals correctly determined that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying petitioner’s request for a preliminary injunction in this challenge to a final rule interpreting the term ‘machinegun,’ 26 U.S.C. 5845(b), to encompass devices known as bump stocks, which permit users to fire a semiautomatic rifle continuously with a single pull of the trigger.

SCOTUS declined to overturn the ban.

With SCOTUS leaving the ban in place, the process of challenging the ban may have run its course. This means the ATF ban on bump stocks is likely here to stay.

The case is Aposhian v. Garland, No. 21-159, in the Supreme Court of the United States.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.