How Democrats Are Trying To Resurrect The Bump Stock Ban 

Those TTAG readers who have followed the issue of bump stocks and banning the devices will likely recall that in mid-June the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the ban implemented during Donald Trump’s first presidency.

In the 6-3 decision, the court ruled that a bump stock does not magically turn a semi-automatic firearm into a “machine gun,” which could be regulated under the Gun Control Act.

Unlike some recent gun-rights cases before the Supreme Court, this case did not involve the Second Amendment right to bear arms but a federal law that defines a machine gun as any weapon that can fire “more than one shot,” “automatically,” and “by a single function of the trigger.”

In his majority opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas explained that each time a shooter fires a rifle, the shooter must “release pressure from the trigger and allow it to reset before re-engaging the trigger for another shot.” The bump stock, he wrote, “merely reduces the amount of time that elapses between separate ‘functions’ of the trigger” by allowing the shooter to quickly press the trigger again.

True to form, less than a week later, Democrats in the U.S. Senate were already attempting to pass legislation banning the devices again. Only strong opposition by Republicans stalled the measure, prompting gun-hating Sen. Chuck Schumer to castigate Republican senators for their lack of support.

Now, anti-gun Democrats are at it again. According to a report at wsbtv.com, federal lawmakers were back to debating the issue late last week, with lawmakers on Capitol Hill hearing from a survivor of the Las Vegas shooting, anti-gun advocates and gun-rights supporters on the issue.

At the hearing, Democrat U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin criticized the U.S. Supreme Court and the justices who struck down the ban.

“The Republican-appointed Justices concluded wrongly, in my view, that the Trump administration could not define bump stocks as machine guns under the National Firearms Act,” Durbin said. Fortunately, just because Durbin thinks that doesn’t mean it’s true.

While Senate Democrats are pushing for a bill that would make it clear that the National Firearms Act includes bump stocks, which it does not, Republican opposition is likely to doom such a measure from the start. Still, the bill has already been filed and could be considered in the upcoming 2025 session.

In the end, it is unlikely that Democrats will be able to ram through a bump stock ban, giving the clean sweep by Republicans on election day, capturing the U.S. Senate, retaining the U.S. House majority and winning the presidency. And it’s unlikely Trump would push such a ban again since that’s about the only anti-gun move he made during his first presidency.

Equally unlikely is that the Supreme Court will let such a ban stand if Democrats manage to pass one, given the court’s earlier ruling on the matter.