Federal Appeals Court Upholds Bump Stock Ban

A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled bump stocks are illegal machine guns.

The Court issued a new opinion on Tuesday upholding a lower court decision that found the ATF acted properly when it reclassified bump stocks as machine guns under existing federal firearms law.

“The central question on appeal is whether the Bureau had the statutory authority to interpret ‘machine gun’ to include bump stocks,” Circuit Judge Robert L. Wilkins wrote in his opinion on behalf of the court. “Employing the traditional tools of statutory interpretation, we find that the disputed rule is consistent with the best interpretation of ‘machine gun’ under the governing statutes.”