The U.S. government was wrong when it said a ban on machine guns applied to bump stocks, a federal court ruled on Jan. 6.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in 2018 claimed that two laws banning machine guns meant bump stocks were illegal, reversing its earlier position. The move, backed by then-President Donald Trump, came after a man carried out a mass shooting in Las Vegas, using bump stocks to fire more rapidly.
Michael Cargill, a Texas resident who had to surrender bump stocks due to the reversal, sued in 2019, arguing that the ATF and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, violated the Constitution by usurping the role of Congress in defining the machine gun ban as extending to bump stocks….