On October 1, 2017, a man smashed two windows in a hotel room on the 32nd floor and fired for eleven minutes at country music fans who had gathered in their thousands for the festival down on the Las Vegas Strip. 60 people died immediately or as a result, more than 850 people were injured, it was the worst mass shooting in recent US history. “This appears to be the act of a disturbed, insane man,” declared Mark Hutchison, the governor of Nevada, in front of a hospital at the time, but that was only half true.
This mass murder by a gunman was also facilitated by the almost limitless freedom of American gun laws. The 64-year-old shooter not only used 24 weapons, especially several rapid-fire rifles of the type AK-15 and AR-10military equipment permitted in the United States. He also used so-called bump stocksto be able to shoot and kill at an even faster rate. He then shot himself.
In the wake of the massacre, the then government of Donald Trump implemented a ban on these bump stocks These devices, known in English as “rapid-fire pistons,” increase the rate of fire of semi-automatic weapons. Roughly speaking, they are a replacement for the piston on the shoulder, so that the usual recoil can be used for the next shot without having to pull the trigger again. They are more or less machine guns. Hundreds of shots can be fired in this way within minutes; according to investigators, this multiple murderer fired 1,057 in less than a quarter of an hour.
Trump is not known as an anti-gun activist. But even most of his political opponents were of the opinion that he bump stocks was completely justified in taking him off the streets. Otherwise, his maneuvers have received little applause from the left, and concerns about his return to the White House are growing by the hour. But now the Supreme Court has overturned one of his most sensible measures.
The owner of a gun shop in Texas filed the lawsuit
On Friday, the committee decided to allow aid to mass shootings again. “A bump stock does not turn a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” claims Justice Clarence Thomas in justifying the 6:3 majority. Even with a bump stock A semi-automatic rifle “fires only one shot for each trigger pull.”
The lawsuit was brought by the owner of a gun shop in Texas who had bought such amplifiers and had to hand them over after the ban was lifted six years ago, otherwise he would have had to face a prison sentence. The ruling was less about the Second Amendment, the right to freely own weapons dating back to the Wild West, which in America is still defended at all costs. It was about gun control rules that are open to interpretation.
The staunchly conservative majority of the Supreme Court is of the opinion that this weapon tuning does not fall under a 1986 gun law that sought to keep machine guns away from civilians. The law was based on a 1934 regulation from the aftermath of the Al Capone era that sought to ban any weapon “that automatically fires more than one shot by pulling the trigger once” or that could be used “to fire more than one shot without manual reloading.”
Even Trump had interpreted it differently, arguing that this extra “turns legal weapons into illegal machine guns.” Now he had a campaign spokeswoman say that the court had spoken, “and its decision should be respected.” She continued: “President Trump has been and will always be a passionate defender of Americans’ Second Amendment rights, and he is proud to be supported by the NRA.” The NRA is the National Rifle Association, the American gun lobby.
The highest court voted on a once and perhaps soon again popular devil’s stuff. The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives suspects that between 2010 and 2018, approximately 520,000 bump stocks were sold. “How many more people have to die before they understand that something like this should not be on the market?”, quotes the Wall Street Journal a survivor of the Las Vegas shooting.
President Joe Biden now remembered the victims of that massacre. “Americans should not have to live in fear of this mass devastation,” he said. “We know that thoughts and prayers are not enough.” He is calling on Congress to ban bump stocks and assault weapons – “send me a bill and I will sign it immediately”.
Liberal Judge Sotomayor is appalled by the vote
However, the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, points out that Republican votes are needed for this. Hardliners among Republican representatives such as Chip Roy and Matt Gaetz are very satisfied with the Supreme Court’s gun decision. The ruling by America’s most important lawyers is as well received in these circles as the one that canceled the federal right to abortion in 2022.
The proponents of the reversal are generally much closer to the gun-friendly Republicans than to the Democrats. Judge Samuel Alito had no objection to flags of Trump’s movement flying in front of his houses, and Thomas apparently likes to be invited by right-wing billionaires. This panel of judges in the building opposite the Capitol that was attacked by Trump fans in 2021 is also said to be currently deciding on Trump’s immunity.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor is appalled by the vote of her panel. “Today the court bump stocks back into the hands of civilians,” she writes. It rejects Congress’s definition of “machine gun” and uses a definition “that is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the text of the law.” As a minority on the Supreme Court, she is often left with nothing but frustration when the right-wing camp prevails again. “There are days when I come into my office after a case is announced, close the door and cry,” she said recently at Harvard. Friday could have been another such day.