'Deadly consequences': Critics predict horror after Supreme Court scraps bump stock ban
An earlier version of this story incorrectly quoted Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The error has been corrected
The Supreme Court on Friday overturned a ban on bump stocks, which was a Trump-era regulation that banned add-ons to firearms that increased their firing rates to those of machine guns.
The ruling drew a stinging dissent from the court's liberal justices.
"When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent. "A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires 'automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.' §5845(b). Because I, like Congress, call that a machinegun, I respectfully dissent."
"Today, the Court puts bump stocks back in civilian hands," she also wrote. "To do so, it casts aside Congress's definition of 'machinegun' and seizes upon one that is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the statutory text and unsupported by context or purpose."
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Over 500 people were shot in 11 minutes in a Las Vegas shooting in 2017 in which the shooter used the bump stock addition to his assault rifle to massacre civilians.
MSNBC host Katie Phang recalled that "the Las Vegas shooter, in October 2017, had 18 rifles and a handgun. Thirteen of the rifles were outfitted with bump stocks. The shooter used all but one of those bump stock-equipped rifles. With the assistance of the bump stocks, the killer unleashed a total of 1,049 rounds in just 11 minutes."
Christian Rincon quoted the dissent on X, saying, "Sotomayor cooking the s--t out of the majority."
"The Supreme Court just gutted a years-long bump stock ban," said Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), whose district includes part of Las Vegas. "This is terrifying for so many communities impacted by gun violence, including Nevada’s First District and the victims of the 1 October shooting. An angry lawmaker is a motivated one. This fight is far from over."
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie was killed in the Parkland school shooting, called the ruling "radical."
"The bump stock decision is radical, even for this Supreme Court," he wrote on X. "This Supreme Court is now on record as the Court which has guaranteed because of their extremism that more Americans will die from gun violence. They have also guaranteed that the talk of violence by MAGA, will be more deadly."
"I’ve talked to dozens of law enforcement folks — fed/local, Trump-y/anti-Trump — all but one or two thought the bump stock [regulation] Trump pushed through post-Las Vegas was modest, reasonable, and didn’t infringe on Second Amendment rights. Court is going far beyond where any court has gone on guns," wrote New York Times correspondent Glenn Thursh.
Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern posted a compilation of cell phone videos from the shooting, saying, "Listen to the gunfire in these videos from the Las Vegas shooting. Automatic fire—a continuous spray of bullets enabled by a bump stock. 60 people [were] slaughtered in 10 minutes from 490 yards away. That is what the Supreme Court just legalized."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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