By Kaelan Deese, Supreme Court Reporter
The Supreme Court said Monday it would not take up a pair of cases that involved challenges to a ban against gun “bump stocks,” which are attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.
Without issuing any comment, justices declined to hear an appeal from a Utah gun rights advocate and another brought by the Gun Owners of America, a Second Amendment advocacy group that challenged the restrictions enacted during President Donald Trump ‘s administration. The ban was instituted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives in response to the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, in which an armed sniper used a bump stock in the process of killing 60 people after firing more than 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes.
The decision to deny cert in both cases follows a 6-3 decision last term that expanded gun possession rights and weakened states’ ability to limit the carrying of guns in public spaces.
The Supreme Court had previously declined a separate opportunity to take a case involving the bump stock ban.
While the high court has declined to hear cases on such bans on numerous occasions, another gun activist is presently waiting on a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals after he asked the court to roll back the Trump-era ban.
An attorney at New Civil Liberties Alliance, a group representing Texas-based advocate Michael Cargill, told the Washington Examiner that the matter at issue in the Fifth Circuit case is not the Second Amendment but if bump stocks qualify as illegal “machine guns” under federal law.
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