Fifth Circuit Struggles With Federal Bump Stock Ban (1)

A full panel of US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit judges wrestled Tuesday with how a bump stock works and whether the government can define it as an illegal machine gun under existing law.

“Imagine somebody invented a robot that caused the trigger to be pulled multiple times,” said Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee. “All the shooter has to do is hit one single button and it turns on the robot, but the robot is triggering it multiple times. Is that a machine gun?”

The Fifth Circuit’s 16 active judges had agreed to consider in an “en ...