In Bump Stock Arguments, Constitution-Hating Justices Prove They Have No Idea How Guns Work
By: Jordan Boyd February 28, 2024 (I can’t post the whole article, the first part tells it all)
Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan repeatedly insisted bump stock-equipped guns can fire up to 800 rounds a second. That’s false.
The U.S. Supreme Court convened on Wednesday for oral arguments about whether the federal government was right to ban bump stocks on claims the assistive casing transforms semiautomatic rifles into machine guns.
The justices normally would use their questioning time to evaluate whether bump stocks qualify as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger,” as defined in the 1934 National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act, which prohibits any device that results “in converting a weapon into a machinegun.”
Instead, oral arguments for Garland v. Cargill quickly devolved into confusing hypotheticals and debates that stemmed from justices’ incredibly limited understanding of how guns work.
Bump Stock Basics
Automatic weapons like machine guns are prohibited under U.S. law as dangerous and unusual because, with one trigger function, they can discharge hundreds of rounds per minute. Bump stocks, a simple casing added to the stock of a gun, merely aid shooters — especially those with disabilities — with trigger dexterity. The modifiers often do help shooters attain a faster rate of fire, but still require multiple trigger functions to achieve multiple shots.
The key differences between automatic and semiautomatic weapons with bump stocks were largely lost on the justices, especially Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, who repeatedly insisted bump stock-equipped guns can fire up to 800 rounds a second. They, along with the government’s legal team, repeated the lie that semiautomatic rifles with modifiers could fire hundreds of shots (in Kagan’s words, “a torrent of bullets”) each moment.Cargill lawyer Johnathan Mitchell corrected them multiple times.
“Why would even a person with arthritis think theyneeded to shoot 400 to seven or 800 rounds of ammunitionunder any circumstance if you don’t let a person without arthritis do that?” Kagan asked.
“They don’t shoot 400 to 700 rounds because the magazine only goes up to 50,” Mitchell explained, noting “rapid fire is not the test under the statute.” “So you’re still going to have to change the magazine after every round.”
Mitchell also repeatedly called out Jackson’s false assertion that firing a gun with a bump stock only requires one trigger movement.
“It’s factually incorrect to say that a function to the trigger automatically starts some chain reaction that propels multiple bullets from the gun. A function of the trigger fires one shot, then the shooter must take additional manual action,” Mitchell said….
https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/28/in-bump-stock-arguments-constitution-hating-justices-prove-they-have-no-idea-how-guns-work/