US Supreme Court overturns Trump’s ban on bump stocks, devices that make mass shootings deadlier

While the ruling could curtail some of the powers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to regulate guns, the Supreme Court could have dealt a far bigger blow to agency, law professor Eric Ruben told The Trace, a nonprofit that reports on gun violence. The decision still leaves in place bump stock bans in 17 states and the District of Columbia, meaning Congress could act quickly to implement nationwide bans. Conservative efforts to overturn firearm restrictions have “resulted in a messy, unsettled landscape for gun regulations,” The Washington Post reported, and this ruling, Ruben said, reflects the “political dysfunction when it comes to gun law.”

This decision “highlights the Supreme Court’s skepticism of administrative agencies,” law professor Adam Winkler said, a theme across cases before the court in recent years. However, the court’s pending decision in a case challenging a legal doctrine that has long empowered federal regulators and angered conservatives has the “potential of being one of the most destabilizing decisions that this court has issued,” argued James Goodwin, an analyst at leftwing think tank Center for Progressive Reform. If the court strikes down the precedent known as the Chevron deference, it could severely stunt the power of federal agencies, Politico wrote.