New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin is in disbelief that there will be no federal regulation on a firearm accessory “capable of causing extreme bloodshed” following the United States Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) decision to strike down the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) bump stock ban.
Breitbart News reported Friday’s six-to-three SCOTUS decision, noting that Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion.
Thomas made it clear that bump stocks do not turn semiautomatic firearms into automatic firearms:
Semiautomatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machineguns. This case asks whether a bump stock—an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire)—converts the rifle into a “machinegun.” We hold that it does not…
Platkin responded to the SCOTUS decision with a statement in which he, nevertheless, claimed that bump stocks “convert semiautomatic rifles into machine guns.”
He reminded New Jersey residents that although SCOTUS struck down the federal ban on bump stocks, the devices are banned at the state level, and he plans on enforcing it “to the fullest extent.”
Platkin claimed, “There is no valid reason for any law-abiding citizen to own a device capable of causing extreme bloodshed.”
On October 17, 2017, just over two weeks after the Las Vegas mass shooting and a time in which the bump stock ban was being discussed and pushed, Breitbart News pointed to an ATF Association letter informing lawmakers that the ATF approved bump stocks because they do not turn a semiautomatic rifle into “a machine gun.”
The letter said:
The National Firearms Act of 1934, Title 26 U.S.C. 5845(b) defines a “machine gun” as any combination of parts designed and intended for use in converting a weapon to shoot automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. ATF also holds that any item that can cause a firearm to fire more than one shot by the single function of the trigger is also regulated as a machine gun.
The Las Vegas killer used a “bump slide” accessory that attaches to the stock of a semi-automatic rifle and enhances the rate at which the shooter can pull the trigger on the firearm. This increases the rate of fire close to that of an actual machine gun. However, under the current law, it does not make it a machine gun.
The case in which SCOTUS struck down the bump stock ban was Garland v. Cargill.
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, a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. 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.
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