Department of Justice Bump Stock Regulation Beats Takings Claim

A Department of Justice regulation that requires people who own bump stock devices that make semiautomatic rifles act like machine guns to either destroy them or give them to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives isn’t a compensable taking under the Fifth Amendment, the Federal Circuit said.

A takings claim depends on plaintiffs having an established property right in continued possession or transferability, the opinion by Judge Richard G. Taranto said. But ownership of bump stocks is limited by the federal law that regulates machine guns, it said.

The regulation was adopted in the wake of the October ...