Supreme Court’s Bump Stock Ruling Is Dystopian Nonsense

In a decision that may mark the low point for blinkered statutory interpretation in the history of the US Supreme Court, the conservative majority has concluded that gun regulators violated the law when they decided that bump stocks turn a semiautomatic rifle into an illegal machine gun.

If you want to know why people hate lawyers, just look at the majority’s opinion — which flies in the face of all common sense. One day it will be taught in law schools as the prime example of how literalism is the bane of law — and how conservatives have used it to thwart the law’s essential function of protecting human beings from harm.