Stocks allow a rifle to be modified to fire as an automatic weapon. File photo courtesy of Creative Commons
A Vermont jurist and the state’s top prosecutor said a Friday ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court striking down a federal ban on bump weapons will not result in the overturning of a separate state ban in Vermont on devices that allow Semi-automatic rifles shoot more quickly.
The 6-3 decision by the nation’s highest court overturned the firearms ban enacted by the Trump administration after the deadly 2017 mass shooting at a country music concert in Las Vegas in which a shooter used firearms with firearms, The New York Times reported. Friday.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had exceeded its authority when it banned the device and issued a rule classifying firearms as machine guns, The Times reported.
“We maintain that a semi-automatic rifle equipped with a stock is not a ‘machine gun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘with a single trigger pull,'” Thomas wrote, according to the Times report.
Peter Teachout, a law professor at Vermont Graduate School who specializes in constitutional law, said Friday that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the federal ban on booster stocks will not also strike down a law. separate state law banning booster stocks in Vermont.
“It was not based on the Second Amendment of the Constitution,” Teachout said of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. “It was based on the interpretation of a federal statute adopted about 100 years ago that made the possession and use of machine guns a federal crime.”
The high court’s ruling, Teachout said, was that “weapons modified with these stocks do not constitute machine guns within the meaning of the federal statute.”
As a result, he said, it limits the federal government’s ability to use that federal statute to ban booster stocks.
“Because it is not based on constitutional grounds,” Teachout said of the high court’s decision, “it has no impact on the regulation of firearms in Vermont.”
It would have been a different matter if the US Supreme Court decision had struck down the ban based on the Second Amendment, according to Teachout, since the US Constitution applies to both the states and the federal government.
“I’m not saying it’s not open to question,” Teachout said of Vermont’s ban on booster actions. “I’m just saying that this Supreme Court decision only applies to the application of federal statutes, not state statutes.”
Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark said in a statement Friday that her office had filed a brief in support of the federal ban on emergency actions and called the U.S. Supreme Court ruling “unfortunate.”
“I want to assure Vermonters that this decision has no impact on our state, or a couple of neighboring states’ ban on booster stocks,” Clark said in the statement. “The decision also does not prevent Congress from implementing a new ban on these devices.”
The United States Supreme Court building. Archive photo from Wikimedia Commons
The law banning firearms in Vermont was part of a series of gun reform measures enacted in 2018. It was approved by lawmakers and signed into law by Governor Phil Scott two months after an alleged shooting plot was uncovered in a school in Fair Haven.
The Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs is currently challenging two firearms laws enacted in the state in federal court in Vermont: a 72-hour waiting period for firearm purchases and a ban on high-capacity magazines. .
Chris Bradley, president of the federation, said Friday that it was too early to say whether the U.S. Supreme Court ruling would lead his organization to file a legal challenge to the ban on bump stocks in Vermont as well.
“It’s premature at this point and, according to Chris Bradley, it’s not the federation. It is the federation according to the board of directors,” he said.
Bradley added that his organization is “midway through a very expensive case” that is at the trial court level and will likely include extensive appellate litigation.
“We’re going to do one thing at a time,” he said.
As for his reaction to Friday’s ruling, Bradley responded: “I think the Supreme Court did the right thing, certainly the ATF overstepped their bounds and they got beat up for it.”
Conor Casey, executive director of GunSense Vermont, a gun control advocacy group, said Friday that he was disappointed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.
“It’s a despicable decision,” said Casey, who is also a state representative. “I truly believe that celebrating this decision is celebrating the countless American deaths that are coming here.”
US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson to dissent from the majority opinion, according to the NewYork Times.
“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,” Sotomayor wrote. “A semi-automatic rifle equipped with a stock fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single trigger function.’ Since I, like Congress, call it a machine gun, I respectfully dissent.”
KeynoteUSA reported Friday that even if the federal ban were no longer in effect, booster stocks still would not be available nationwide, as 18 states have enacted laws banning them, citing Everytown for Gun Safety, a group without nonprofit for gun control.
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