WASHINGTON (NEWSnet/AP) — The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether a Trump era-ban on bump stocks, the gun attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns, violates federal law.
The justices will hear arguments early next year over a regulation put in place by the Justice Department after a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.
Federal appeals courts have come to different decisions about whether the regulation defining a bump stock as a machine gun comports with federal law.
The new case is not about the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms,” but rather whether the Trump administration followed federal law in changing the bump stock regulation.
Bump stocks harness the recoil energy of a semi-automatic firearm so that a trigger “resets and continues firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter,” according to the ATF.
A shooter must maintain constant forward pressure on the weapon with the non-shooting hand and constant pressure on the trigger with the trigger finger, according to court records.
The Supreme Court is already weighing a challenge to another federal law that seeks to keep guns away from people under domestic violence restraining orders, a case that stems from the landmark decision in 2022 in which the six-justice conservative majority expanded gun rights.
A decision is expected by early summer.
Copyright 2023 NEWSnet and The Associated Press. All rights reserved.