USSC lifts bump stock ban

No surprise. The Supreme Legislature that gave us the atrocity that's Bruen also gave us this. It's their thing. In fact, the same (corrupt) Republican wrote both decisions.

 

If one simply ignores all the studies that show certain gun laws do work, it's very easy to conclude they do nothing.

 

I tend to agree. I was skeptical about the ruling until I read it. I don’t want bump stocks available to the general population, but Congress should pass a law. There are too many executive orders that go behind the scope of what the law intends with respect to Presidential authority.

 

Sweet! Lets get rid of speeding laws too.

 

“No different than a quick trigger finger” to Judge Thomas.

Why not just use the fingers then?

Like back in the day when I did bench press competitions and we wore ludicrous shirts so jacked that you can neither enter nor exit them alone, and some shlub would criticize me, I should have just said “no different than someone who can actually bench press this weight on his own.”

 

Hit the nail on the head:

 

But it sure makes it easier to kill MORE people. Mass shootings will continue as this country devolves into extreme division and stupidity. But why in God's name make it easier. Pathetic.

 

Fine then pass the law through congress. ATF is to enforce laws not make laws or decide what they think is illegal.

 

Ok, so should our executive branch government not have to abide by what our elected representatives clearly wrote in statute as it applies to criminal law as long as the outcome is one you like? That is essentially what this is. The NFA as written cannot logically be read to construe a bump stock as a machine gun if you have any sort of understanding of how guns actually work and how a bump stock functions when attached to a rifle. It’s legal for the same reason a Gatling gun is legal and not an NFA item: neither fire more than one round automatically per single function of the trigger, despite both having high rates of fire. Gatling guns have no trigger and are manually cranked, and bump stock equipped rifles have a trigger that is manually pulled in rapid succession.

@GatorBen said it well earlier; I have no issues with congress passing a law banning bump stocks. They are a novelty IMO with little actual purpose, and I don’t think SCOTUS would see them as protected even under Bruen. Just don’t do it in the overly broad way the Florida GOP did where the law could conceivably be construed to ban even things like trigger upgrades, binary triggers, etc that were obviously outside of the intent but are exactly why laws based on rates of fire are hard to actually articulate and get right.

Have you ever actually used a bump stock? It honestly isn’t any different. It’s shifting how a person operates the trigger from pulling it with your finger using the small muscles of the hand to manipulating and regulating the forward pressure applied to the foregrip of the rifle with the large muscles of the arm. It makes it easier to pull the trigger fast in a somewhat sustainable fashion, but it isn’t like you put one of these on a rifle and any idiot can then just dump a full magazine without interruption. There is some level of skill involved and even if you know how to use one you likely aren’t going to get more than a few rounds off before something is off with the timing and/or pressure and you have to reset and try it again.

You can accomplish the same with a zip tie but bump stocks are easier to set up, more marketable, and easier to justify charging someone $100 for than a pack of zip ties.

 

I’m still not clear what the material difference is that folks seem to think exists between pushing your finger against the trigger and pushing the trigger against your finger.

If I’m holding a TV remote in my left hand, I’ve done the exact same thing (pushed the button) regardless of whether I move my right hand to push my finger against the stationary remote button, or move my left hand to push the remote button against my stationary finger.

 

Also, while Thomas is an absolute gift on gun cases, I’d also like to give some serious thanks to a very unlikely helpful voice in this opinion: the Sotomayor dissent.

The dissenters are also out here being quite helpful for future assault weapons ban cases - recall that Heller says Second Amendment protections extend to arms “in common use,” and it certainly can’t hurt to be able to say that even the liberals on the Supreme Court agree - in the very first paragraph of this dissent no less - that AR-family rifles are.

 

Isn’t that because they took away all guns and made it illegal to own any?

 

Japan, yes. Australia, no. I don't know about the "taking away" part for Japan, though.

 

After watching some videos of people shooting with bumpstocks (including the Vegas mass shooting), my guess is that a person can get off about 5-8 rounds per second. I don't quite understand how that works. Is the gun pulsing so that the trigger is being pulled automatically? It doesn't seem that a person's finger could move that fast.

Edit: Here's what I read from a NYT article - The stock “bumps” back and forth between the shooter’s shoulder and trigger finger, causing the rifle to rapidly fire again and again. The shooter holds his or her trigger finger in place, while maintaining forward pressure on the barrel and backward pressure on the pistol grip while firing.

What Is a Bump Stock and How Does It Work? (Published 2017)

 

Clarence Thomas wrote it up well in the opinion but here is the jist of it:

AR-15s have a buffer tube that protrudes rearward from the lower receiver that allows the bolt carrier to travel rearward and reset the action after each shot. That buffer tube is traditionally what stocks attach to, and slide back and forth on with a detent if they are adjustable. The lower receiver also has place to attach a pistol grip behind the trigger well. Usually these two pieces are independent of each other.

If you want to bump fire in this standard configuration, you put one hand on the foregrip and apply forward pressure, while either putting your finger or another object through the trigger guard in a fixed position. The most common way is to place your finger through the trigger guard and loop your finger through a belt loop, but you can also hold a zip tie looped through the trigger well, use rubber bands, or any number of other objects. As you apply forward pressure, the trigger bumps against the finger or object and is depressed to the rear. The gun fires and recoils rearward, and you actively modulate the forward pressure such that the gun moves back forward and bumps the trigger against your finger or the object again. Rinse and repeat, but the constraint on the firing cycle is that you must modulate the pressure such that you don’t bump the trigger before the bolt has completed its cycle of travel and is closed and locked Otherwise you’ll have a dead trigger. You also can’t apply too much forward pressure or the gun just won’t travel rearward, or not enough or you won’t push the gun back forward to bump fire

what a bump stock does is provide a solid plastic unit with a stock with no positional detent attached to a pistol grip and a place to rest your trigger finger on. Under recoil, the rifle travels rearward into the stock, and you’re holding the pistol grip and fixing your finger in position on the rest. You then modulate forward pressure with your support side arm on the foregrip such that once recoil has moved the rifle rearward you are pushing it back forward to bump the trigger into your finger.

The same constraints apply. You can’t outrun the cyclic rate of the action and you can’t have too much or too little pressure or pressure at the wrong time or you will break the bump firing cycle.

what bump stocks actually do well is let you use larger muscles that move faster to fire a standard rifle without a competition-style trigger (think lighter and with shorter travel) closer to the mechanical peak fire rate of the gun for longer periods of time.

make no mistake, though, there are competition shooters who can approach the firing rate of an automatic weapon with just a competition style trigger. Heck, I have several handguns that I am capable of firing for short periods as fast as the slide is able to cycle.

 

One forces you to manually squeeze the trigger each time, slowing down your firing rate. The other allows you to continuously fire without moving your finger. What's the material difference between holding your finger down and having to pull the trigger each time? It's the firing rate that's possible, correct?

 

The liberals don't care because the "common use" argument is foolish. As long as the Republicans are in control, they'll make up the rules as they go on guns. So what the liberals say is irrelevant. If the liberals gain control again, they're going to toss out the silly rules the Republicans have created, so it doesn't matter.

 

Frankly, the reason bump stocks (and other engineering workarounds) exist is largely because of the Hughes amendment. In the post-Hughes environment, full autos are $30k+ NFA items manufactured before 1986 and thus can’t be bought new. Without Hughes, they would be a bit more than an equivalent AR-15 plus a $200 tax stamp, registration with photos and fingerprints, affirmatively passing a background check, and a wait for ATF bureaucracy as is the case with silencers and SBRs/SBSs. NFA items generally don’t ever get used in criminal activity.

 

except it’s not just holding down the trigger, and a gun with or without a bump stock will have the same mechanical limit to its firing rate. There is still an action necessary with the support side hand to do the bumping and it isn’t simple. It’s just more consistently sustainable than moving your trigger finger as fast as you can. It’s legal the same way a manual trigger crank is legal and always has been.

At what firing rate should a semi auto become a full auto, if that is the key concern? Tuned triggers that are clearly still semi auto can drastically increase the rate of fire over a standard GI fire control group, as can things like lighter weight bolt carriers and springs, etc. Where exactly should the line be?

 

An analysis of the Vegas mass shooting suggested that he got 90 rounds off in 9 seconds. You are obviously correct about the limitations of the firing mechanisms in a rifle, but I do not believe any humans can squeeze off 90 rounds in 9 seconds.

Edit: About 90 rounds in 10 seconds
What Is a Bump Stock and How Does It Work? (Published 2017)