By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the bump stock ban imposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the ruling did not erase state-level bans on the accessory.
State laws prohibiting bump stocks remain in effect, because the high court ruling was more about ATF exceeding its authority under federal law and the Constitution.
As noted by Capitol News Illinois, the state law “remains in place, at least for now.”
Likewise, KUOW in Seattle made it clear that the law banning bump stocks in Washington also remains in effect, and it was Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, who put it into perspective for the station.
What really happened, he explained, is the high court reminded the ATF the agency does not have the authority to write its own laws and redefine a piece of equipment as a machine gun. Only Congress has that authority, because of the separation of the three distinct branches of government: Executive, Legislative and Judicial.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker correctly observed, “The Supreme Court decision, as you know, is not a Second Amendment decision. It was a decision about whether the ATF has the authority to issue the rules that they put out back then. … I do think it’s going to spur action at the state level as well as the federal level to try to once again ban bump stocks. Here in Illinois, we’ve already done that.”
For many years, the ATF had not considered bump stocks to be anything other than an accessory for a semi-auto rifle. Following the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, the agency instituted the ban.
The high court, in its ruling authored by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, appears to have left the door open for Congress to act on bump stocks, which may or may not happen anytime soon, as it is an election year and anything gun-related could be a toxic subject for debate in political contests and on Capitol Hill.
