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.
Law is weird. Sometimes courts rule according to the letter of the law, but often courts rule according to the “intention” of the law. There’s often a difference between what a law says and what it really intended.
I mean it’s pretty clear that a law regulating machine guns is meant to affect any firearm that can achieve rapid automatic firing. Lawyers are not engineers or fortune tellers, they should not have to make many mechanical distinctions, and they cannot predict what technologies might be developed in the future. The point of the law is not to regulate mechanical methodology or inner workings, it’s meant to regulate the ultimate functionality of a firearm and the resulting outcomes. Judges and Lawyers understand this and they will sometimes (but not always) make rulings accordingly.