© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: An exploding gun stock attached to a semi-automatic rifle to increase the rate of fire is seen at the Good Guys Gun Shop in Orem, Utah, U.S., October 4, 2017. REUTERS/George Frey/File Photo
By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected another challenge to a federal ban imposed under former President Donald Trump on so-called “bump stock” devices for Allows semi-automatic weapons to fire like machine guns.
Judges declined to consider an appeal by a group of individuals and gun dealers in Minnesota, Texas and Kentucky after a lower court rejected their argument that the government violated the “foreclosure clause” collection” of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution by unjustly appropriating their private property. compensation.
The Trump administration has moved to reclassify machine guns as machine guns, which are banned under US law, in a rare gun control measure spurred by the 2017 mass shootings in Las Vegas. The Supreme Court in 2019 refused to block the ban from going into effect. Last month, judges dismissed an appeal by a gun rights and gun rights lobby group in Utah over lower court rulings upholding the ban as a reasonable interpretation of the law. federal ban on the possession of machine guns.
The stock uses the gun’s recoil to trigger the trigger, allowing the semi-automatic weapon to fire hundreds of rounds per minute so it fires like a machine gun. Trump pledged to ban them after a gunman used a semi-automatic weapon equipped with a buttstock in a shooting that killed 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), an agency of the United States Department of Justice, reversed earlier conclusions and classified the stock as a machine gun under a 1934 US law named is the National Gun Act. The policy goes into effect in 2019.
Two groups of plaintiffs have filed lawsuits seeking damages for having to destroy or turn over their inventory in the Court of Federal Claims, which hears monetary claims against the U.S. government. A judge dismissed the actions, arguing that the policy was a legitimate exercise of the federal government’s power to outlaw dangers to public health and safety.
The Washington-based U.S. Federal Court of Appeals upheld those decisions last year for a different reason, ruling that ownership in the devices was inherently restricted due to the existing machine gun ban. of the federal.
In a country divided over how to curb gun violence, gun rights are expanding. Legal experts say many gun control measures are at risk since the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in June that first recognized the right to carry handguns in public for self-defense The Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and use guns. bear arm.
That ruling, backed by the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, broke New York state limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home.
