cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15645865
If the Supreme Court rules that bump stocks aren’t machine guns later this summer, it could quickly open an unfettered marketplace of newer, more powerful rapid-fire devices.
The Trump administration, in a rare break from gun rights groups, quickly banned bump stocks after the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert that was the deadliest in U.S. history. In the ensuing years, gun rights groups challenged the underlying rationale that bump stocks are effectively machine guns — culminating in a legal fight now before the Supreme Court.
A machine gun is defined by the NFA of 1934 using very specific terms. Bump stocks do not meet these terms. There is only one way this will shake out.
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I think the phrase “or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun” will come into play.
It speaks more of intent than the ‘single trigger pull’. If your intent is to turn a semi-automatic into a functional full-automatic, this would be the phrase that makes that gun a “machinegun”.
We will have to see how it plays out in court.
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