baona/iStock via Getty Images
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling last week on the proper classification of firearms, but made a more important decision that further expanded the court's view of gun owners' rights.
The question is whether a blow The stock (an accessory to the standard stock of a semi-automatic that can use recoil to hit the shooter's trigger finger and fire cartridges in rapid succession) turns a semi-automatic rifle into a prohibited machine gun. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) previously considered semi-automatic rifles with stocks not to be machine guns until one was used in October 2017 to kill 58 people in Las Vegas. The ATF changed course and later classified the ammunition as machine guns as part of the National Firearms Act and ordered anyone in possession of an ammunition to destroy it or surrender it to avoid criminal prosecution.
In the context of the National Firearms Act, a machine gun is any weapon that fires continuously after the shooter initially pulls the trigger, thus defining a machine gun as any weapon designed to fire more than one shot without reloading and with a single shot. trigger pull. trigger. The machine gun/stock issue was further clouded by the Gun Control Act, passed in 1968, which expanded the definition of a machine gun to include parts and components that could transform a weapon into a machine gun.
The case heard before the Supreme Court stems from an ATF enforcement action that seized stocks from Central Texas Gun Works owner Michael Cargill. Cargill, an Army veteran, sued the ATF for overstepping its administrative authority by imposing a ban that was not enacted by congressional legislation by forcing him to hand over two shock absorbers under protest. The case, Garland v. Cargill, went through the court system before reaching the Supreme Court in February via an amicus brief filed by the Constitutional Accountability Center (the petitioner in the case is the United States Attorney General, Merrick Garland).
This left the Supreme Court in charge of defining what a single pull of the trigger is. Their decision was based on the argument that there is a difference between a shooter who flexes his finger to pull the trigger and a shooter who pushes the firearm forward to strike the trigger against his stationary finger. The Court subsequently ruled, in a 6-3 decision, that stocks do not fall into the same classification as machine guns and should therefore not fall under the ban imposed by the National Firearms Act.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that “semi-automatic firearms, which require shooters to repeatedly pull the trigger with each shot, are not machine guns. This case asks whether a stock (an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to quickly re-pull the trigger) converts the rifle into a machine gun. We maintain that this is not the case.”
In her strong disagreement with the ruling, Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote: “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. A stock-equipped semi-automatic rifle automatically fires more than one shot, without manual reloading, using a single trigger function. Since I, like Congress, call it a machine gun, I respectfully dissent.”
Despite the ruling and what ultimately presents itself as a broader view on gun rights, the industry reacted little during Friday trading in shares of Sturm, Ruger (New York Stock Exchange: RGR), Smith & Wesson (SWBI), Vista Outdoor (VSTO) and American Outdoor Brands (AOUT), all ending the session in the red.