Supreme Court hears challenge to federal bump stock ban

The Supreme Court’s conservatives pressed the Biden administration Wednesday to justify a federal ban on bump stocks, a device that can convert a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon that can fire far more rapidly.

But after 90 minutes of argument in the high-profile dispute, it appeared that the court was deeply divided over whether or not to strike it down.

Here are the key things to know:

Read more from the takeaways of the hearing.

Several conservative Supreme Court justices indicated Wednesday they are concerned with the federal ban on bump stocks, a device that allows semi-automatic weapons to fire more like a machine gun.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said he was worried about Americans being prosecuted under a ban they aren't aware of. And Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that while she was "intuitively" concerned about the bump stock devices, she questioned why the issue wouldn't be better handled by Congress.

That was a theme that the justices returned to repeatedly, underscoring a push by the court's conservatives to limit the power of federal agencies in recent years.

Meanwhile, the court's three liberals focused on the idea that rifles equipped with bump stocks effectively work like machine guns and can do similar damage if misused.

"The entire point of this device," Justice Elena Kagan said, is that the shooter pushes forward on the weapon while shooting and "a torrent of bullets shoot out."

Justice Elena Kagan made a broader point during the arguments about how justices should interpret laws when they’re not explicitly clear.

“I view myself as a good textualist,” Kagan said, referring to the idea of reading statutes first for the meaning of the words rather than trying to glean the intent of the lawmakers who passed the legislation.

And, “at some point,” she said, “you have to apply a little bit of common sense.” For example, the law in question that bans machine guns, Kagan said, “comprehends” a weapon that “fires a multitude of shots with a single human action."

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan said the federal law at the center of the case was written such that “small adjustments of a weapon” would not allow for crafty exceptions to it.

“This statute is loaded with anti-circumvention devices," Kagan told Jonathan Mitchell, an attorney representing the challenger to the federal bump stock ban.

“And in all kinds of ways, you're accepting of that and saying, ‘yes, you can’t circumvent it by that. You can’t circumvent it by non-conventional triggers,'” Kagan continued. “’But you can circumvent it through this one mechanism.”

Mitchell said he's not trying to get around the law.

“I'm not conceding that you can circumvent the statute, Justice Kagan, we're just interpreting the word ‘trigger,’ which is a term that appears in the statutory text and it has to be interpreted,” he said.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative who often sits at the ideological center of the court, is raising concerns about people being prosecuted under the ban without even knowing it exists.

"Even if you're not aware of the legal prohibition, you can be convicted," Kavanaugh pressed the attorney representing the Biden administration. "That's going to ensnare a lot of people who are not aware of the legal prohibition."

The government previously estimated that as many as a half million bump stocks were sold between 2011 and 2018. Brian Fletcher, representing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the government took all steps it could to advise Americans about the ban, including publishing the proposed rule in the Federal Register.

That prompted a joke from Neil Gorsuch about Americans cracking open the Federal Register "next to the fire and the dog" to read about federal regulations.

Justice Neil Gorsuch is pressing the Justice Department on a key point raised by those challenging the ban: Why not just let Congress handle a ban on bump stocks?

It is true that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had repeatedly interpreted the law banning machine guns to not include bump stocks. Gorsuch called attention to remarks from the late California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an ardent gun control advocate, who suggested the administration couldn't ban the devices on its own.

"I believe there are a number of members of Congress … who said that this administrative action forestalled legislation that would have dealt with this topic directly," Gorsuch said.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she is “sympathetic” to the Biden administration’s arguments in defense of the bump stock ban, but signaled she has concerns about a federal agency issuing it instead of Congress.

But, she added, that raised a question of why Congress didn't pass legislation "to make this covered more clearly."

Part of Wednesday's arguments are expected to be over whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority in 2018 by reclassifying bump stocks as “machine guns” under the National Firearms Act.

Starting off the arguments, several of the court's conservatives asked very specific questions about how bump stocks work — and how they differ from a machine gun.

Thomas appeared to be trying to a draw a distinction between a machine gun and bump stock, noting that there is an extra step a shooter has take with bump stock to fire rapidly: Apply forward pressure on the weapon with the non-trigger hand.

The Supreme Court has started arguments in a major case challenging a federal ban on bump stocks approved by the Trump administration following a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.

The devices convert semi-automatic rifles into weapons that fire at a much higher rate, several hundred rounds per minute. The gunman involved in the 2017 shooting was found with semi-automatic rifles and bump stocks.

First up to the podium is Brian Fletcher, the attorney representing the Biden administration — which is supporting the ban.