Federal court strikes down Trump-era bump stock ban

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down the Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a firearm accessory that enables a semi-automatic gun to shoot at an increased rate of fire.

In a 13-3 decision, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans held that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), acting under "tremendous" public pressure, short-circuited the legislative process by approving a rule to define bump stocks as "machineguns," which are illegal to possess. The court said ATF did not have the authority from Congress to do so. 

The bump stock ban, opposed by gun rights activists, was enacted by the Trump administration after the 2017 massacre in Las Vegas, where a gunman slaughtered 58 people at a music festival. The shooter used rifles equipped with bump stocks, allowing him to fire more than 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes at a crowd of 22,000 people. 

In 2018, President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing the attorney general to regulate bump stocks, and ATF acted in accordance with the president's order. To do so, the agency reversed its decade-old position that bump stocks were not machineguns.