Supreme Court strikes down federal ban on bump stocks

The Supreme Court ruled to strike down down a ban on so-called bump stocks, a device that increases the firepower of automatic weapons.

Brianna Herlihy is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

"Semiautomatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machineguns. This case asks whether a bump stock—an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire)—con- verts the rifle into a 'machinegun.' We hold that it does not," he wrote. 

The case, Garland v. Cargill, asked the court whether a "bump stock" device is a "machine gun" as defined by federal law because it is designed and intended for use in converting a rifle into a weapon that fires "automatically more than one shot ... by a single function of the trigger."