The authority to regula bump stocks the same way it regulates machine guns, which are illegal. A bump stock is a device that enables set my automatic rifles to buyer like fire like machine guns. The truth the Trump Administration in las vegas, where a gunman used the device in a shooting that killed 58 people and wounded several hundred others. Shortly after, a man filed suit and after multiple rounds of lower courts, the u. S. Supreme court has until june to issua ruling. The oral argum an hour and 30 minut we will hear arguments first to fire a rifle fitted with a bump stock, the shooter faces his trigger finger on the builtin finger ledge and uses his other hand to press the rifle forward. As lg as they maintain steady rwardreure, the rifle will fire continuously until it runs out of bullets and will empty a 100 round magazine in about 10 sends. Those weapons do exactly what congress meant to prohibit when it enacted the prohibition on machine guns, and those weapons are mainguns because they satisfbo parts of the definition. First, a rifle with a bumptock fire is more than one shot with a single usage of the trigger. A function of the tgg happens when some act by the ooter starts a firing sequence. With a semi automatic rifle, it fires one shot for each actio of the trigger because the shooter ha to pull and release the trigger for every shot. A bump stock eminates those movements and allows shooter to fire many shots with one act, a forward push. A respondent says a separate function of the trigger happens every time the trigger on a traditional rifle moved backwards and releases the hammer, even if it moves without any further mipation by the shooter, but that is inconsistent with contemporary usage, does not account for guns with other kinds of triggers, anwod make it easy to avoid the ban on machine gs automating the backandforth movement of the trigger afr the initial poll. A rifle with bp stock fire is more than one sho automatically. When the user pushes forward to fire the first sho, the bump stock usesheecoil energyo create a continuous back and forth cycle that fires hundreds of shots per minute. The respondent says that cycle is not automatic because the shooter has to keep up forward pressure to keep the cycle going , but traditional machine guns require backward pressure on the trigger to maintain continuous fire. Either way, a single motion initiates and maintains a single shot sequence, and either way the weapon is a machine gun. I welcome questions. What would i have to do to re machine gun . It depends on the machine gun. Some it is the push of a butn, summit is the pull of a trigger. The statutory definition is, does it shoot more than one shot automatically by single function of the trigger . Justice thomas but i dont have to do anything elsepu pressure on it or anything else . Mr. Fletcher it depends on the gun. If you take the traditional m16 gun, you a right, to fire more than one shot, you have to pull the trigger and hold it back and as long ast maintains pressure, it kpshooting. Justice thomas with the bu stop, what would i do different . Mr. Eter it is the same thing in the sense thaon motion automates back and forth movent Justice Thomas what is happening with a trigger initiated firing of a machine gun . What do i have to do other than press the trigr . Mr. Fletcher a traditional machine gun, take an m16, you pull the trigger back and hold it and it keeps shooting. With a bump stop, you push forward and that both initiates and continues to fe. Justice thomas what is happening with trigger when you have the recoil. Mr. Fletcher right. The primary function of the trigger, the difference with the bump stock is it fires multiple shots automatically by automating the movement of the trigger. My friend says the trigger moves back and forth every time the sh i fed our view is those subsequent motions of the trigger are not functions of the trigger becau they are not responding to separate acts by thehooter. Justice thomas what is happening with the trigger when someone does not need a bump stock to fire weon . Mr. Fletcher this is t unassisted manual firing, wher an expert can take a regular miutomatic rle and hold it loosely enough that they can do Something Like bump firing there is just one function of the trigger because the first push starts the sequence. The atf explained and we agree thats not automatic because there is no selfregulating mechanism. Justice thomas whats e difference . The same thing is happening with the trigg. Mr. Fletcher thats why we would say with manual bump firing, there is a single futi of the trigger, one action that initiates the firing sequence. We think it is not automat. E user is having to do all the work that the bump stock automates for you. I am having a little trouble with the nontrigger hand. Are you holding the gun or pushing it forward and then back, forward and th back . Mr. Fletcher the best place t look is the District Court actual findings. What he explains is from the shooters perspective, it is one continuous forward push. Mentally you are doing nothing but pushg rward. Continuously pushing forward . Are you holding it withreure or are you movg ur hand . Mr. Fletcher i distinguish between those things because what you are doing is pushing forward. If you look t videos we cite, some of them are in slow motion a when the shooter does that, the hand is moving forward very fast, 600 times that is second. Not happening because the shootecamove their hand back and forth 600im a minute. It is not happinbecause the shooter can move that fast. Ithaening because when a shot is fired, the recoi dris the rifle backward and overcomes the pressure momentari. That lets the trigger reset and another shot be fired. We view it as one act and we think thats what the District Court found. Would it be right to say that e pressure on a typical machine gun, you are pulling and feeling continuabaward pressure . And on this you are feeling continual forward pressure of the opposite han mr. Fletcher exactly right. I think thats exactly he District Court found. Mr. Fletcher, i watched these videos to try to figure out at this looks like. I want to ask about the mp firing. What if i designed someinand i called it a bump band. You can do it with the, with yo bt loop. What if i design and market something i call a bump band to turn my semiutomatic in the same way, why wouldnt that be a machine gun under the statute . Mrflcher we think that is not functioning automatically because it is not a selfregulating mechanism. Those devices help the shooter keep their trigger finger still but the shooter still has to manage the movement ofhe rifle, hold it so it moves backward the right distance and the right direction, then hold it so it moves forward in the right distance. What makes the bump stop different is it is built for this purpose. It has a finger ledge that holds your fingein place but also has a sliding function so when a shot is fired, the recoil pushes the fl back, lets it disengage from the trigger so the shooter does not have to manually releaset,nd allows it to move forward just the rit distance and direction. May be mr. Mitchell can help me understand what tha means beusit seems it helps you do it better but it functions the same way. Intuitively i am syattic to your argument and it seems le this is functioning like a machine gun would. Looking at that definition, why didnt Congress Pass that legislation to make th covered more clearly . I think your argument depends on votion. Let me give you a hypothetical and tell mif this satisfies the definition. Letimagine someone builds a fully automatic maingun. I nt try to come up with the technology for exactly how this gng to happen, but they install a tripwire on their property and leave the gun there unattended. Walk away. Somebody trips the wire and it begins shooting lots of rounds. Does that satisfy your definition of machine gun . Mr. Fletcher i think it does, cause a single act we have us different words, like volition but the ideas, is some separate manual act required for each shot or is a single continuous act resulting in theirg of multiple shots . Thats an unusual way to enact a machine gun, but a tripwires still one act by a person. Justice Coney Barrett but it is an unintentional act. For the bu sp to work, you still have to have your finger rit ere. What you are focusing on is the definition. The circuit lked at it from the perspective of the gun and the machinery of the gun, but you ilneed your finger there to pull back the trigger the same way you wouldf was volitional. Mr. Fletcher not quite. The typical way you fire these mp stocks, acknowledged in the peti appdi you dont initiate firing by pulling backward with the trigger finger. E nger stays stationary. You initiate by pushing. The district found you could replace your trigger finger with a plastic post attached to the bump stock and it would work the same. Its true you have to keep your finger trend if you moved it, the firing sequencwod st, t that is a pretty trivial input from the shooter. What is continuing the seque is the push forward. An i ask, stepping back a moment, why do these distinctions wh spect to operations matter . I read the statute to be a clsification statethat congress is decng everyone, or us, todentify certain kinds of weapons and those certain kinds of weapons are being treated in a particular way, being prohibited. I am trying understand, if it is true that the distinction infocused oneris the one between the movement of the trigger going back and forth or staying the same, i am trying to understand why that matters for the purpose of ts classification. Mr. Fletcher we dont think it does because we dont think function of the trigger means movement of the trigger. We tnkt means act of t shooter. Thats how it was used at the time, including by the president the nra when he proposed the language that became t statute. Ever since people have equated funcon of the trigger with pull the trigger. That makes sense if you read functionf e trigger to be an act by the shooter. Justice Brown Jackson i thought your answer was gng to be, we dont think it matters because of something you said in t intro. These are the kinds of weapons congress was intending to prohibit because of e mage that they cause, or Something Like that. I read the word function to be doing signifintork in this statute. Whenunion is defined,t is really not about the operation of thehing, its about what it can achieve, what it is being used for. I see congress as putting function in this. The function of this trigger is causehikind of damage. 800 rnd a second, or whatever. The classification of weapons we are trying to identify are those that function in thasa way. Mr. Fletcher i agree witmo of that, but our argument is not Congress Band machine guns because they are dangerous. Anything that is dangerous or shoots fast is a machine gun. Weraw the interpretation from the text. Justice Brown Jackson how about anything in which the trigger functions e me way . By functions, i dont necessarily know that that means it has to move in the same way. It could function the same way insofar as it automatically allows for 800 rounds to be reased. Mr. Fletcher exactly, the functi othe triggeres the shooter start the firing sequence, and we think the statute is aimed at we are worried about guns that let you shoot many shots without Manual Action. A single funcf the trigger, does the shooter have to do one thing or many things . Can we steba a minute . I can understand why tse should be made illegal, but we are dealing with a statute enacted in the 1930s. Through many aintrations, the government took the position that these bump stocks are t machine guns. Then you adoptedn interpretive role, not even legislative, saying oerse that would render bwe a quarter of a llion to a half Million People federal felons, not even through a process they could challenge, bject to 10 years in federal prison, and the only wath can challenge it is if they are prosecuted, and they may wind up disposssed of all guns in the future, wl as other civil rits, including the right to vote. I want your reaction to that. I believe there are a number of members of congress, including senator feinstein, who said this administrative actiofoed all legislation that wld action forestalled a gestation that would have dealt with this topic directly, rather than using a 100yearold statute in a way that many districts would not have anticiped there is a lot packed in there, so i do have a lot of thoughts. This court often concludes that thstutes are the runway. I think the government should do the samehi. After the Las Vegas Shooting, i think it would have been responsie r the atf not to takenoer closer look at this prior interpretation, reflected in a handful of classification letter and to look at the problem more carefully. Ving done that, i think it would have been irreonble if the atf concluded, as it did, that these devices are prohibited, for the atf not to fix it. Justice gorsuch why not do it by a legislative rule properly . I know you noticedheomment. But an interpretive rule, you can more or less just issue. You do not even have to put it the federal registry. You do in some circumstances, but not all. You are creating a class of between a quarter of a million and a half a Million People who have, in reliance on past administrations, republican and democrat, who said this does not qualify under the statute. An interpretive rule, you cannot even challenge it. Mr. Fletcher we are in a poste,hey are challenging. Justice gorsuch but you said do not touch th bause that is not before us. In them to interpretive rule, u do not get a challenge. You get a criminal prosecution against you. I disagree with that on a number of leve. I think it would be better for those concerned about administrative power that acknowledge this is is an interpretive rule. They cannot make something a crime that was not a crime before. Is not a crime to violate the les. It has been and will always be a crime to violate a statute. E f is saying we got that wrong fo and are fixing it now. And you are rit,t would be horribly unfair to prosecute people based on reliance on the agencys pa insurance, but that is taken care of by doctrineth ensure no one h been and will be prosecuted for possessing these devices during a time the atf said it was legal. Th is not a reason to shackle the atf for this court to adopt something other than the best reading of the Words Congress wrote. True, it was 90 years ago, but we think it used capacious language like function of the trigger, rather than pull the trigger, and added parts that could be used to convert something into a machine gun they knew americs ve a lot of ingenuity and there are a lot of ways to bui something that is a machine gun. I do not think you should hesitate from applying the broad language that congress wrote. Consistent with the meaning it has always had. Are you representing on behalf of the government that you are not going to prosete anyone prior to 2017, anyone who wasnt a felon or disqlied for some other reason . Mr. Fletcher atf madve clear that anye o turned in their bump sto or destroyed it bere march 2018 would not face prosecution. As a practical matter, the statute of limitations is five years. In a month, the limitations would be gone. We have not prosecuted people and if we ieto do it, i think they would have a good defensbad on entrapment. Heack and forth here leads me to believe that at best there might be some ambiguity. The question is, whats the best reading . We have a whole slew of doctrineth talk about that with respect to that we shouldnt render statutes ineffective by an interpretation. That is not the best reading, rrt . Mr. Fletcher correct, exactly. Justice sotomayer we have said that as far back as 1824. Mr. Fletcher in the emily, exactly. Juste tomayer i think your position is if anyone is in doubt about this interpretation, not including sothg that you basically hold in your hand and let the recoil move it backandforth, if that is not automatic, then it does not make any sense that this is not a maine gun. Correct . Mr. Fletcher that is part of our argument, absolutely. It inojust this device. We cited a number of examples of things people have done to get around t b on machine guns. Excepting some interpretations my friend is offering today would legalize not just bump stocks, but those devices as well. Juste tomayer one final question. Justice barrett said something about she hoped that mr. Mitchell would expinhy there was a difference in the functioning between the belt and the gun. Could you gohrgh that again . I thk understand it, but mr. Fletcher athe atf explained, iisossible to d bump firing, meaning the rifle moves back and forth and bumps against your stationary finger. An expert can do that without any assistive device, and you can also do it by hookg ur finger into a belt loop or something to hold your finger in ple. We do not think tse things function automatically. The definition of automatically is a selfregulating mechanism. That is a bump stop, a device purpose built to harness the Recoil Energy of the gun to automate the process of releasing the trigg tmove the rifle back just the right distance in thrit direction so the trigger resetsndhen ensure the rifle moves forward just the right distance, just the rightirection. We think the cycle created is a lfegulate in process. It is possible to do e me thing with manual work and expertise,uthats not unusual to Say Somethingane done automicly if you eliminate Manual Movement that someone like an expert could. May i ask you about mens rea, for prosecuting somee now . What mens rea showing witth government have to make to coicsomeone . Mr. Fletcher the relevant case is staples and the courtel you have to be aware of the facts that render your weapon so even if you are not aware of the legal prohibionyou can be convicted. Mr. Fletcher thats right, but thats truef l machine guns. The distctroblem is the one created by the fact the agency was previously saying these were not machine guns thats going to ensnare a lot of people who are not aware of the legal prohibition. Mr. Fletcher i dont think so. One of the reasons this is an interpretive rule, the reason was in part the agency knew it had previously been saying something different. It wanted to maximize public notice. Justice kavanaugh why not require the government to also prove that the person knew what they were doing was wngl, was illegal . Mr. Fletcher tha is not the understanding this court adopted in staples. We have not briefedhat question here, but to the extent that you are concerned, i not a concern unique to bump stocks. We mention