Bump-Stock Ban Held Invalid Under Recent Supreme Court Precedent

A challenge to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ ban on bump stocks was supported by two recent US Supreme Court opinions, a federal circuit said, reversing its prior ruling upholding the ban.

The bump-stock rule “was an invalid exercise of ATF’s regulatory authority,” Judge Jill N. Parrish of the US District Court for the District of Utah held Tuesday, granting the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment. Parrish relied on the Supreme Court’s 2024 rulings in Garland v. Cargill—holding that ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing the bump-stock ban—and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo—declaring that the Administrative Procedure Act doesn’t require courts to defer to an agency interpretation of a statute simply because it’s ambiguous.

• A bump stock is an attachment to a semiautomatic firearm that makes it fire rapidly. After a gunman used a bump stock in the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, ATF classified them as machine guns and banned their ownership
• W. Clark Aposhian, who legally purchased a bump stock before the ban, challenged it. The District of Utah had upheld the ban in 2019, saying it was the best interpretation of the ambiguous machine gun statute, and the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed
• The Supreme Court originally let the Tenth Circuit’s decision stand. But the legal landscape changed after the justices handed down Cargill, and Loper Bright, and the case found its way back to Parrish

Salcido Law Firm PLLC, Richard Samp of Arlington, Va., and the New Civil Liberties Alliance represented Aposhian. The US Department of Justice represented ATF.

The case is Aposhian v. Garland, D. Utah, No. 2:19-cv-00037-JNP-CMR, 8/13/24.