Multiple gun rights groups, led by the Gun Owners of America, were joined by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) – the firearms industry trade association – in filing amicus briefs with the United States Supreme Court this week in support of the challenge by Michael Cargill in Garland v. Cargill.
Amicus curiae, also known as “friend-of-the-court” briefs are written by individuals or groups who are not directly involved in a legal case, but have expertise or insight to offer a court to assist in making its decision.
Case Background
Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works, purchased two bump stocks in April 2018, months before the ATF published its new rule. In March 2019, he subsequently surrendered the items to ATF and a day later filed suit in the Western District of Texas challenging the rule. Following the bench trial, the judge ruled in favor of the government – while a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment.
However, a subsequent District Court entered a judgment for Cargill – and following an appeal from the U.S. Attorney General, last November, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
Cargill challenges that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) had overstepped its authority when officials at the agency published a Final Rule that criminalized the possession of “bump stocks” by classifying them as “machineguns.” The NSSF’s amicus brief argues that the ATF’s bump stock rule exemplifies a troubling trend of ATF regulatory overreach, one that has resulted in destabilizing consequences for both the firearm industry and the people whose rights it enables.
The trade association noted that the ATF initially told the public of bump stocks, “that they were not machineguns” according to the definition approved by Congress and maintained this position for more than a decade, including in interpretation letters to the public.
As a result, the possession of the firearm accessory was legal and didn’t fall into the restrictions under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA) that governs the possession of automatic firearms, including machine guns.
“No matter what their intent is, ATF does not have the authority to supersede Congress by writing their own criminal law,” Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president & general counsel, said in a statement. “Drafting criminal law through the rule-making process has become a dangerous habit of the Executive Branch that threatens the separation of powers and threatens to relegate the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution as secondary to the whims of bureaucratic authorities. This dangerous precedent must be challenged or we risk surrendering our rights to the administrative state.”
The ATF changed its position on bump stocks following the 2017 tragedy in Las Vegas when an individual criminally misused firearms, equipped with bump stocks, to attack concertgoers. Then-President Donald Trump vowed to eliminate bump stocks regardless of Congress, and the ATF carried out the order with its Final Rule that bypassed U.S. lawmakers and their sole authority to write criminal law by reclassifying bump stocks as “machineguns” and subjecting owners to criminal penalties, the NSSF further noted.
In its amicus brief, the Gun Owners of America (GOA) – along with the Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of California, Heller Foundation, Tennessee Firearms Association, Tennessee Firearms Foundation, Virginia Citizens Defense League, Grass Roots North Carolina, Rights Watch International, America’s Future,
U.S. Constitutional Rights Legal Defense Fund, and Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund in Support of Respondent – also offered the argument that a bump stock does not enable semi-automatic rifles to fire multiple rounds from a single trigger pull, nor does attaching a bump stock to a semi-automatic rifle make it a machinegun.
The ATF’s new interpretation conflicts with the Second Amendment, because previous Supreme Court precedent has confirmed that the Second Amendment protects not just operable weapons but also the ancillary equipment carried on the person that is useful for their operation, the GOA-led brief stated.
Since the ban was first announced, GOA has met with officials in the Trump Administration to voice its opposition, has lobbied Capitol Hill to prevent codifying the ban, and even filed a separate lawsuit challenging the ATF’s policy reversal, which was previously denied by the Supreme Court in 2022.
“This is just one of the numerous examples of the ATF weaponizing their authority to arbitrarily harass and criminalize law-abiding gun owners,” said Erich Pratt, GOA’s senior vice president. “Gun Owners of America is proud to stand with our friend Michael Cargill and all bump stock owners who have come under fire with this ban. We hope SCOTUS will recognize that this action by the ATF has no basis in fact and directly contradicts the Second Amendment.”
The highest court in the land will decide whether bump stocks are “machineguns” as defined by Title 26 of the United States Code.
