The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal of the federal ban on bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic firearms to fire rapidly like machine guns.
The justices did not comment Monday in declining to review a lower court-ruling that upheld the ban, which took effect nearly a year ago.
The Trump administration announced the ban following a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 in which a gunman used bump stocks that allowed him to fire more than 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes and kill 58 people, wounding hundreds more.
In a statement accompanying the Supreme Court's decision not to hear a challenge to the bump stock ban, Justice Neil Gorsuch said he agreed the case does not merit review, but criticized the lower court for applying Chevron when it upheld the ban. (His full statement is below in second document.)
"The agency used to tell everyone that bump stocks don't qualify as 'machine guns,'" he wrote. "Now it says the opposite. The law hasn't changed, only an agency's interpretation of it. And these days it sometimes seems agencies change their statutory interpretations almost as often as elections change administrations." He wondered why the courts should defer "to such bureaucratic pirouetting."
Representative Dina Titus (D-NV) released this statement:
“The Supreme Court’s decision to leave the ban on bump stocks in place is a victory for everyone who believes we must address the epidemic of gun violence,” said Congresswoman Titus (NV-1). “Yet, we cannot allow a single executive order to be a substitute for legislation that would save more lives.
“I remain committed to passing a bill that would enshrine a bump stock ban into law that could not be repealed at the whim of the president. Meanwhile, we must expand background checks, implement “red flag” laws, and reinstate the ban on high-capacity magazines.”
(The Associated Press, CBS News contributed to this report.)
