The court ruled 6-3 against the Biden administration along ideological lines, finding that bans imposed by the Trump and Biden administrations — enacted by classifying bump stocks as machine guns — went too far.
“We conclude that [a] semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it does not fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger,’” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the decision.
Sotomayor rejected that reasoning.
“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she continued.
Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench, a rare move underlining her disagreement. It was the first time she read a dissent this term.
“This is not a hard case. All of the textual evidence points to the same interpretation,” she added, deriding the majority’s interpretation for ignoring common sense and instead relying on obscure technical arguments.
“Its interpretation requires six diagrams and an animation to decipher the meaning of the statutory text,” she wrote.
Sotomayor said the decision “enables gun users and manufacturers to circumvent federal law.”
The federal bump stock ban was first established by the Trump administration in 2017 after a gunman used the device in a Las Vegas mass shooting that killed 58 people and wounded hundreds of others. The Biden administration supported and defended the ban in court.
It’s a balance. I think the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty is important because false accusations in domestic disputes are not unheard of, but the cost of being wrong is generally borne by the person without the firearm in a permanent way, so I think the outcome of the decision is best.
No the decision is that the 30 year old law prohibiting domestic violence restraining order from having weapons can stand. I think that is the best balance of rights.
Well, i wasn’t entirely clear. I didn’t want to say anything about whether the decision was well-crafted or legally brilliant or possible impact on other 2A cases, just that I agree with the result (no guns for those under domestic violence restraining order).
Shootings probably happen because people touch themselves. /s
(One of the reasons Jaspess is not big on practicing religion is that when she was younger, someone at her old church from back home had the audacity to tell her that her dad must’ve done something bad to get brain cancer.)
This is nearly 6 years ago, but they calculated that -
“Shootings took nearly a year off life expectancy in total, but about 3.5 years for blacks compared with under six months for whites.”
“Our study using cumulative data from 2000 to 2016 demonstrates a total firearm life expectancy loss of 905.2 days, which is nine times greater than observed in 2000”
It would be interesting to see a more recent study.
My company lost a customer service manager last week. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and by all accounts just caught in the cross fire in a targeted attack. Only 3 dead, so not a mass shooting in the stats. Unfortunately my core city is on pace for an all-time annual homicide record. Approaching .001 qx for homicide alone. One of the homicides was actually shot more than 20 years ago, but died this year as a result of the injuries suffered in the initial attack.
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill in 2022 that made it legal for gun owners in the state to carry a concealed handgun in public without obtaining a permit, then saying gun violence crimes were because of “criminals” who were “getting the guns anyway.”
Though federal law prohibits anyone under 18 from possessing a handgun, there are no minimum age laws restricting them from possessing rifles or shotguns. And in Georgia, there are no regulations on safe storage, which could require firearms to be securely stored unloaded and away from ammunition.
