The court ruled on Friday that the government lacked the authority to outlaw the accessories.
After bump stocks were used in a 2017 shooting at a concert in Las Vegas that claimed the lives of over sixty people, the Trump administration outlawed them.
According to a Texas gun store owner who challenged the restriction, the government went too far in labeling the accessories as machine guns, which are illegal under federal law. He successfully argued his case before the highest court in the country.
The court ruled that a semi-automatic rifle with an attachment is not a machine gun in the sense that federal law defines it.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority judgment on the Supreme Court, declaring that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms had “exceeded” its jurisdiction.
Rifles with bump stocks “cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger,’ and even if they could, they would not do so ‘automatically,'” the court declared, referencing a portion of the legal definition of machine guns.
Three of the nine justices—Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—dissented from the divided decision.
“Today, the Court puts bump stocks back in civilian hands,” stated Justice Sotomayor.
“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck,” she added, referring to whether they could be considered machine guns.
