Trump order to ban bump stocks upheld

Washington The Supreme Court Thursday refused to block a Trump administration initiative banning bump stocks, the attachments that enable semi-automatic rifles to fire in sustained, rapid bursts. The court's action, in a one-sentence order, means that the regulation will remain in force while challenges to it move forward in the courts. There were no noted dissents. The case concerns executive power, not the Second Amendment. The lead plaintiff, Gun Owners of America, which describes itself as "the 'no compromise' gun lobby," argued that the administration had exceeded its authority by banning bump stocks under federal laws that largely ban machine guns. (The National Rifle Association was not a party to the suit.) Bump stocks work by harnessing a firearm's recoil energy to allow it to keep firing after a single pull of the trigger. The Justice Department has said this transforms semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic machine guns. The regulation, which went into effect Tuesday, bans the sale or possession of bump stocks, which were used by a gunman to massacre 58 people and wound hundreds of others at a Las Vegas concert in October 2017. Under the regulation, Americans who own bump stocks have 90 days to destroy their devices or to turn them in to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In instructions posted on its website, the bureau suggested "crushing, melting or shredding" as acceptable methods of destruction. Michael E. Hammond, a lawyer with Gun Owners of America, said the group "wouldn't advocate that anyone violate the law." But he added that the regulation may be hard to enforce. "My guess, from the states that have enacted bump stock bans, is that most of the 500,000 people that have bump stocks are not going to turn them in, if history is any indication," Hammond

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