The US Supreme Court lifted the ban on gun accessories imposed in 2019, saying the Trump administration acted illegally.
With 6 votes in favor and 3 votes against, the US Supreme Court on June 14 ruled to affirm that the ban on “multi-talking” implemented by the administration of former President Donald Trump since 2019 is illegal and lifted. related limitations.
The ruling concerns a lawsuit filed by Michael Cargill, a Texas firearms store owner and gun rights advocate, in which he accused US federal agencies of misinterpreting the machine gun ban and imposing Used for inter-bar butts. Representatives of President Joe Biden’s administration play the role of defending and protecting policies in the lawsuit.
“The plaintiff questions whether the machine gun stock, an accessory that helps semi-automatic rifles achieve a high rate of fire, turns the semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun. We believe that is not true and repeat affirms the judgment of the first instance court,” Supreme Justice Clarence Thomas said in a statement after the verdict.
Judge Thomas emphasized that a semi-automatic rifle fitted with a machine gun is not a machine gun because “it does not fire more than one shot per trigger pull”.
AR-15 style rifle and machine gun stock (below) at a gun store in Utah, USA, in 2017. Photo: Reuters
Michael Tyler, President Joe Biden’s campaign communications director, criticized the US Supreme Court’s decision.
“Military weapons have no place on American streets, but Trump’s Supreme Court justices have decided that the gun lobby is more important than the safety of children and communities,” he said, referring to the former US president’s appointment of 3 conservative judges on the Supreme Court.
The ban was applied by the Trump administration in 2019, after the shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead in October 2017. Suspect Stephen Paddock attached machine guns to 12 guns in the hotel room.
The machine gun was born in the late 2000s, with the original purpose of helping people with disabilities use guns more easily, allowing semi-automatic rifles to fire an entire magazine with just one pull of the trigger. This device replaces the gun’s shoulder rest with a “support” that covers the trigger assembly.
After firing, the recoil force pushes the gun backwards and the spring in the pistol grip will push the gun from back to front, causing the trigger to automatically press against the finger, helping the gun continue to fire until it runs out of bullets. With this mechanism, the gunner can “shoot bullets” with his semi-automatic rifle.
Technically, this device only supports the trigger pull of the gunner’s finger after each shot and does not interfere with the machine gun assembly. Therefore, even though it fires at a rate of up to 600 rounds/minute thanks to the machine gun, the gun is still considered a semi-automatic weapon and is not banned under US law.
The US government allowed the commercialization of the handgun in 2010 after concluding that the device did not violate federal law.
The rate of fire of 600 rounds/minute that the machine gun provides for semi-automatic rifles is only slightly less than military automatic rifles and much faster than unmodified civilian guns. Fast rate of fire does not actually make the gun more dangerous, but helps the gunner create a greater density of fire, causing more casualties in a short time