Politics
BREAKING: Supreme Court Issues MASSIVE Ruling For Second Amendment
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday issued a groundbreaking ruling for gun owners who saw their rights curtailed in the wake of a deadly shooting by a killer who relied on a bump stock to increase the rate of fire.
In a 6-3 opinion, justices wrote that a federal rule banning bump stocks passed by Congress and implemented by the ATF is an encroachment on gun rights. The decision will likely trigger challenges to state-level bans on the product, which replaces a conventional gunstock, enabling the firearm to fire more rapidly. Three of the court’s liberal justices, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, according to CNN.
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“A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” Thomas wrote in his opinion. “Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will fire only one shot for every ‘function of the trigger.’”
Gun rights advocates had previously argued that a bump stock did not increase the ability of a deranged shooter to kill 58 people during a 2017 outdoor concert in Las Vegas. However, increased visibility around the relatively niche gun accessory proved to be a catalyst for gun reform advocates to pass a federal measure as even Republicans found it hard to defend a part that increases the rate of fire and is used by a relatively small number of gun owners.
The case was first brought by Michael Cargill, a Texas gun store owner who purchased two bump stocks in 2018 before turning them over to the government and quickly suing to get them back. In doing so, Cargill faced up to 10 years in prison for violating the law. Although his defense did not rely on the Second Amendment, the case did put gun ownership front and center in the years since President Trump appointed three justices which has given the Supreme Court a heavy conservative bent, especially given the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade.
However, the traditional partisan lens observing all nine justices isn’t always accurate, as demonstrated by Thursday’s ruling that found pro-life activists had no standing to challenge a Biden-era regulation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to distribute an abortion drug through the mail. The unanimous ruling came as a shock to conservatives and was written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee.
“Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue. Nor do the plaintiffs’ other standing theories suffice,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote, who authored the unanimous opinion. “The plaintiffs have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone,” he said. “But under Article III of the Constitution, those kinds of objections alone do not establish a justiciable case or controversy in federal court.”
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