Justice Thomas concluded with the following in relevant part: ATF responds that a shooter is less physically involved with operating a bump-stock equipped rifle than operating the Model 37. It explains that once a shooter pulls the rifle’s trigger a single time, the bump stock harnesses the firearm’s recoil energy in a continuous back-and-forth cycle that allows the shooter to attain continuous firing. But, even if one aspect of a weapon’s operation could be seen as “automatic,” that would not mean the weapon “shoots automatically more than one shot by a single function of the trigger.” §5845(b).
Abandoning the text, ATF attempts to shore up its position by relying on the presumption against ineffectiveness. That presumption weighs against interpretations of a statute that would “render the law in a great measure nugatory, and enable offenders to elude its provisions in the easiest manner.” The Emily, 9 Wheat. 381, 389. In ATF’s view, Congress “restricted machineguns because they eliminate the manual movements that a shooter would otherwise need to make in order to fire continuously” at a high rate of fire, as bump stocks do. So, ATF reasons, concluding that bump stocks are lawful “simply because the trigger moves back and forth would exalt artifice above reality and enable evasion of the federal machinegun ban.” The presumption against ineffectiveness cannot do the work that ATF asks of it. Interpreting §5845(b) to exclude semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks comes nowhere close to making the statute useless.
Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett joined in Justice Thomas’s opinion. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissent in which she was joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson.
Modern bump stocks were invented for people who have limited hand mobility. A physical ailment that prevents the safe handling and use of firearms is a lawful basis to deny a firearm purchaser’s permit and/or a permit to carry a firearm.
