…Ian Millhiser brought up a terrible potential effect of this case that somehow makes everything worse: If the court strikes down the bump stock ban now, based on the legal ambiguity of the machine gun ban, it’s likely that Congress will never be allowed to go back and make it clear that bump stocks are, in fact, banned. That’s because of the court’s disastrous ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Bruen makes it functionally unconstitutional for Congress to ban types of guns that are in “common use.” If bump stocks are allowed to come back, it’s likely that this court will rule that any future attempts to ban them violates the standard they invented in Bruen.
A decision reinstating bump stocks would show, once again, how violently out of step the conservatives on the Supreme Court are with the rest of the country they rule over. Remember, bump stocks are a gun ban that Donald freaking Trump endorsed. If the court is to the right of Trump on violence, I just don’t know how the republic survives that. Indeed, for future victims of mass shootings, the Supreme Court’s decisions are not survivable.
We have six unelected conservative appointees who seem hell-bent on turning our streets, movie theaters, and music festivals into shooting galleries. I do not know how many more people have to die before the conservatives stop acting like there is a constitutional requirement for gun deaths, but I fear there is no number. As long as conservatives hold power, we will have a mass-shooting epidemic.
