Bump stock ban remains as Supreme Court turned away challenge from gun rights advocates
NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - The Supreme Court has rejected an effort from gun right advocates to challenge the ban on bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire likes machine guns.
On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to take up two cases challenging the ban that went into effect during the Trump administration as an outcome of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting.
The 64-year-old gunman in the Las Vegas shooting had bump stocks attached to several of his rifles when he killed 58 people at a country music festival.
For years, gun right advocates fought to overturn the ban arguing the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not have the authority to classify bump stocks as machine guns.
The gun rights group, Gun Owners of America, which filed the appeal against the ban, wrote in a tweet Monday, "This decision sets a horrible and dangerous precedent, one that will allow the ATF to further arbitrarily regulate various firearms."
When the ban went into effect in 2019, online gun retailers sent tens of thousands of brand-new bump stocks to a Fort Worth recycling plant to be destroyed.
The federal government estimated at the time, U.S. residents possessed more 520,000 bump stocks. The ban made possession of bump stocks illegal.
The controversy surrounding bump stocks put the small town of Moran, Texas, about 130 miles west of Fort Worth, under the national spotlight. It was here where the bump stock was invented and manufactured by a company called Slide Fire. Faced with the ban and lawsuits, in 2018 the company closed.
Monday's decision by the Supreme Court, which gun safety advocates are declaring a big win, comes just months after justices voted to expand gun possessions rights. In June, the Supreme Court struck down a New York law that placed strict restrictions on carrying concealed firearms in public for self-defense.