The Bump-Stocks Case Is a Sign of Worse to Come
Sometimes a Supreme Court case appears to be about a minor technical issue, but is in fact a reflection of a much broader and significant legal development—one that could upend years of settled precedent and, with it, basic understandings of the allocation of powers across our system of government. That’s exactly what is happening in Garland v. Cargill, a case for which the Supreme Court heard oral argument at the end of February. The specific challenge in the case is to a Trump-era federal regulation banning all “bump stocks”—contraptions that, when attached to semiautomatic firearms, allow them to discharge ammunition even more rapidly and without additional pulls of the trigger. Although the specific legal issue before the justices reduces to the technical question of whether a bump stock thus converts a semiautomatic rifle into a “machine gun,” Garland v. Cargill is a much broader illustration of—and referendum on—the real-world implications of the Court’s mounting hostility toward federal administrative agencies. That’s because the real question in Cargill is not whether a rifle with a bump stock …