Federal Bump Stock Ban Upheld on Appeal Under Machine Gun Law

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives properly banned “bump stocks"—which let semiautomatic guns fire like automatic weapons—under a longstanding federal law prohibiting personal ownership of “machineguns,” a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled Tuesday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the ban—which the ATF enacted after the country’s deadliest-ever mass shooting—against a challenge by a gun owner who had argued that the rule “contradicts the plain language” of the machine gun statute. The regulation took effect in 2019.

Judge Stephen A. Higginson, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, said the ATF relied on ...