All posts tagged: machine gun

The Bump-Stocks Case Is a Sign of Worse to Come

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 …

The Missing Piece of the Bob Marley Biopic

The Missing Piece of the Bob Marley Biopic

Nearly 20 years ago, during one of many family trips back to Ethiopia, I spent months wandering through the sprawling capital city. All summer, it seemed, the drivers and cyclists of Addis Ababa were blasting the Ethiopian pop star Teddy Afro’s “Promise,” an infectious, reggae-inflected ode more often referred to by the name of the musician it lionizes: “Bob Marley.” That 2005 song praised Marley for his commitment to Africa—and argued, more than 23 years after his death, that he be reburied in the motherland. (When he died, Marley was buried inside a small Ethiopian Orthodox–style church in Nine Mile, the hilltop Jamaican village where he was born.) Marley’s wife, Rita, told the press at the time that she intended to exhume his remains, explaining that he saw Ethiopia as his “spiritual resting place.” Though he’s most associated with Jamaica, Marley’s purview extended to a broader Pan-African ethos informed by his commitment to Black-liberation struggles—such as the fight to free Zimbabwe from British rule, which he helped commemorate with a 1980 concert. Crucial to his …

A Hard-Won Victory That Ukraine Stands to Lose

A Hard-Won Victory That Ukraine Stands to Lose

In a trench war, depth matters, and on a hilltop outside Orikhiv, 35 miles southeast of Zaporizhzhia, the Russians were dug in more than six feet deep. They’d fashioned a sunken city, a maze of crossed trails extending nearly a mile and commanding an unobstructed view five miles in all directions. From that hilltop, known to the Ukrainian military as Position X, the Russians controlled the vital road south. If the Russians were to push forward, to take Orikhiv and move toward Zaporizhzhia, they would advance from that position. If Ukraine’s counteroffensive were to progress in the southeast, with the goal of eventually retaking Melitopol and choking Russian land access to Crimea, it would have to start by gaining Position X. Last June, Ukrainian forces overcame Russia’s established position on their fifth attempt, after several months and many casualties. Taking Position X was a high point in a tough counteroffensive campaign and a demonstration of Ukrainian capacity. With enough weaponry, Ukrainian persistence, ingenuity, and courage can prevail over numerically superior and better-equipped Russian forces—especially in …

What Al-Qaeda Did to Fallujah, Hamas Did to Gaza

What Al-Qaeda Did to Fallujah, Hamas Did to Gaza

Twenty years ago, on what looked like a movie set built in the Quantico woods, I learned how to fight in a city. This faux city was called “MOUT Town.” MOUT—Military Operations in Urban Terrain—is U.S. military-speak for high-intensity urban combat, like what’s unfolding in Gaza. Tactically, MOUT was very different from the traditional combat we’d already studied in the Marine Corps. The urban battlefield was highly constricted; streets and buildings funneled us into close quarters with our enemy. Beyond every corner, window, or doorway lurked a potential ambush. Most notably, and adding a specific and complex layer to this type of warfare, civilians blended with adversaries, all played by instructors who ambushed us with paintball guns. Casualty rates in urban warfare far exceed those of other forms of combat, a fact reinforced by the dime-size paintball welts that covered my body by the end of MOUT week. Less than a year later, in November 2004, I found myself leading a 46-man rifle platoon into Fallujah, in Iraq. This battle pitted 13,000 Marines and soldiers …