A Second Amendment activist pushed the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday to block a rule created under President Donald Trump‘s administration that banned “bump stocks” that make semi-automatic guns fire in rapid succession.
Michael Cargill, a Texas-based gun rights activist, and his attorneys asked all 16 active judges on the appeals court to reverse a decision by three of its judges upholding the ban, which took effect in March 2019. The ban was instituted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in response to the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, in which an armed sniper used a bump stock to kill 60 people.
An attorney at New Civil Liberties Alliance, a group representing Cargill, told the Washington Examiner that the matter at issue is not the Second Amendment but whether bump stocks qualify as illegal “machine guns” under federal law.
“As a general matter, I would say this case is not about gun control,” said Rich Samp, a lawyer who presented the oral argument before the appeals court on Tuesday. “This case is about who writes the laws in this country. The Constitution says that Congress writes the law, and it’s not the business of administrative agencies to rewrite the law to serve political purposes.”
President Joe Biden‘s administration has defended the bump stock ban, and it has so far survived legal challenges at the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals as well as the 10th and D.C. Circuit.
However, the 6th Circuit decision in December split 8-8 on the vote, the closest the ban has come to being overturned. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court itself has rebuffed petitions to review the case twice.
Despite a three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit’s previous decision to rule in favor of the ban, the full court agreed to hear new arguments Tuesday. During the hearing, some judges suggested the potential of waiting on further Supreme Court action in other cases.
The ATF contends bump stocks utilize the recoil energy of semiautomatic rifles to “trigger resets and continues firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.”
Justice Department attorney Mark Stern argued the key issue that upholds the ATF’s rule is the action of someone shooting a firearm with a bump stock attachment.
“You only have to do one thing,” Stern told the appeals court. “Your trigger finger isn’t doing anything other than sitting still.”
The U.S. government has also argued the ATF is right in its interpretation of federal law to support the ban by the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which held that courts will give an agency deference in ambiguous situations so long as an interpretation is reasonable.
Although Cargill appealed to the 5th Circuit, his lawsuit comes at a time when the Supreme Court has shown favorability to gun-related issues that land before the justices’ docket. This summer, justices ruled 6-3 along conservative-liberal ideological lines that New York cannot demand gun owners provide a justification when applying for a concealed carry permit.
