Supreme Court declines to hear cases regarding bump stock bans
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear two cases that would have challenged a ban on "bump stocks," attachments that allow semi-automatic firearms to shoot in rapid succession.
While the court released a slate of nine cases that would be tried in the upcoming session, the cases regarding bump stocks were not among those selected. The attachments have come under fire in recent years due to the numerous mass shootings in which they have been used. And in a rare display of GOP-led gun control, the Trump administration enacted a ban following the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest in U.S. history.
The two challenges from a pair of gun rights activist groups argued that the federal government did not have the right to pass such a ban due to the 1934 National Firearms Act, which laid out the original regulations for machine guns, NBC News reports.
The groups argued that "the legal definition of machine gun has been distorted beyond recognition," and that courts should not make their decisions on gun rights based on federal guidelines, NBC summarized.
The ban, though, has been upheld multiple times by U.S. appeals courts.
Despite the Supreme Court declining to hear the case, the high court is coming off a summer that saw the "widest expansion of gun rights in a decade," CNN writes. A ruling this past June decided that the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to carry a handgun in public.