After a gunman killed 60 people at a Las Vegas concert in 2017, authorities turned their attention to gun accessories called bump stocks, which allow rifles to fire at nearly machine-gun speeds. Bump stocks were banned by the Trump administration after the shooting.
But the Supreme Court's decision last week to strike down gun control laws — a rare victory for gun control advocates in recent years — could do more than open the door for stocks to rise. Lawyers and gun policy experts on both sides of the gun control debate said the ruling could also undermine President Biden's efforts to restrict other firearm accessories that give semi-automatic rifles rapid-fire capabilities.
Federal officials said the device, a replacement trigger known as a “forced reset trigger” or “wide open trigger,” allows a shooter to fire more than 900 rounds per minute with just one continuous pull of the trigger.
In March 2022, four years after the bump stock ban went into effect, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also imposed restrictions on some of these trigger devices. The agency said in a document at the time that the devices effectively turned semi-automatic rifles into banned machine guns.
But now, lawyers and experts say those restrictions could be overturned by the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision to overturn the bump stock ban. Shortly after the Supreme Court handed down its decision on Friday, lawyers for gun rights groups suing to overturn the trigger restrictions filed a letter citing the bump stock decision as new grounds that “directly impact the central issue in this case.”
The question is, “What defines a machine gun?”
Machine guns are largely illegal and have long been heavily restricted by federal gun laws dating back to the 1930s. The federal government argues that accessories such as bump stocks and forced-reset triggers essentially turn semi-automatic rifles into fully automatic rifles.
Bump stocks allow the rifle to slide back and forth quickly when fired, using the gun's recoil to fire rapidly. Forced reset triggers work by quickly snapping the trigger forward after the rifle's trigger is pulled.
These devices belong to a niche group of modifications that increase a gun's rate of fire, sometimes with deadly results.
The gunman behind the Las Vegas concert attack, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, possessed 14 rifles equipped with bump stocks, and the gunman who shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at a school in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 possessed a “Hellfire” trigger device but did not appear to use it.
“The end result is the same,” said David Puccino, legal director for the Giffords Law Center, a gun violence prevention group. “From the shooter's perspective, it's automatic fire.”
But Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court's conservative majority, said a bump-stocked semi-automatic rifle is not a “machine gun” because it cannot fire more than one shot with “one pull of the trigger.”
Gun rights groups and sellers of trigger accessories pounced, saying it provided a clear path to argue that the ATF's 2022 decision on mandatory reset triggers should also be voided. They argue that the mechanics of mandatory reset triggers are practically and legally different from those of real machine guns.
The ATF declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
“This is one of the key legal arguments we've made from the beginning,” Lawrence Demonico, president of Rare Breed Triggers, the device's manufacturer, said in a video message to supporters. “This is an astonishing ruling.”
He added that the court's decision “will have a direct impact on our efforts to end the ATF's unlawful attacks on mandatory reset triggers.”
Gun control groups said the Supreme Court's decision in Garland v. Cargill is unlikely to provide legal protection for illegal devices known as switches, which turn semi-automatic pistols into automatic rifles and have been criticized by law enforcement for making the guns more lethal and putting bystanders at risk of being hit by a hail of bullets.
Federal agents are trying to crack down on illegal machine gun modifications that use forced-reset triggers. Prosecutors have filed criminal charges against one man in Puerto Rico and one man in Texas for illegally possessing the trigger modifications. Court records show some gun owners are turning their trigger devices over to ATF agents rather than risk prosecution.
Despite these restrictions, similar trigger devices are still available online for $300. YouTube videos show gun owners demonstrating how to install forced-reset triggers and fire dozens of rounds in a matter of seconds. Gun rights advocates argue the devices are constitutionally protected gun modifications.
The federal government is also going after Rare Breed Triggers, a company that operated in Texas and assured customers that its devices were “completely” legal, according to court documents.
The company came under federal investigation soon after it began selling the forced reset triggers in December 2020 and sold 100,000 of the devices over a two-year period, according to court records. In July 2021, the ATF sent the company a letter telling it to stop selling the devices, according to court records.
The federal government sued the company in New York, alleging that Rare Breed violated federal gun laws and concealed information from the ATF.
According to court documents, in August 2022, ATF agents visited Rare Breed customer Patrick Carey's home near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and delivered a letter warning him that he may be violating federal law by owning a gun with a mandatory reset trigger. Carey surrendered two triggers to agents.
“I did not want to dispose of the mandatory reset triggers,” he wrote in an affidavit filed with the court. Several owners of mandatory reset triggers decided to fight, joining the National Gun Rights Association in filing a lawsuit in federal court in Texas in August 2023. They argued that the ATF had overstepped its authority.
The two cases had mixed results: In New York, a Democratic-appointed judge sided with the government and ordered Rare Breed to stop selling the banned triggers, but in Texas, a Republican-appointed judge sided with gun groups and partially blocked the government from enforcing trigger regulations.
Groups suing the Biden administration over trigger restrictions said they feel their position has been strengthened since the Supreme Court's decision on bump stocks. Gun control groups said they are concerned the court has allowed for further gun modifications and paved the way for rapid-fire rifles to become widespread across the country.
“Assault weapons are already dangerous,” Nick Saprina, senior vice president of legal and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, said in an email. He said the changes “will make this deadly problem even worse.”