A LESSON IN THE RULE OF LAW

 Liberals like to talk about the rule of law, but they don’t really believe in it. They usually think that laws are general guideposts that point in a broad direction. It is up to liberal judges to exercise those mandates in accord with their policy preferences.

The “bump stock” case that the Supreme Court decided yesterday is a case in point. I had never heard of a bump stock until 2017, when a mass murderer in Las Vegas used them to, apparently, increase the rate of fire on the rifles he was using. The Court’s majority opinion by Justice Thomas includes a detailed description of how a bump stock works, which I won’t reproduce here.

The issue in the case was whether a bump stock transforms a semiautomatic rifle into a machine gun within the meaning of 26 U. S. C. §5845(b). The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had always taken the position that a rifle with a bump stock is not a machine gun. After the Las Vegas massacre, ATF abruptly reversed course and banned bump stocks.

Machine guns are heavily regulated under federal law. This is the statutory definition of a machine gun:

…any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.

The basic difference between a semiautomatic and an automatic weapon is that with an automatic weapon, you can hold the trigger down and the firearm will fire continuously. With a semiautomatic weapon, pulling the trigger fires one round. You have to let the trigger reset and pull it again to fire another round. A semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock requires a separate trigger pull for each shot; the bump stock, if skillfully used by the shooter, allows the trigger pulls to come faster.

Justice Thomas’ majority opinion (it was a 6-3 decision) patiently explains why a bump stock, while it might help a shooter to increase his rate of fire, does not “automatically” fire “more than one shot” “by a single function of the trigger.” A basic principle of the rule of law is that a statute means what it says, not what a liberal judge thinks it might better have said.

Justice Alito’s concurring opinion makes the point briefly:

I join the opinion of the Court because there is simply no other way to read the statutory language. There can be little doubt that the Congress that enacted 26 U.S.C. §5845(b) would not have seen any material difference between a machinegun and a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock. But the statutory text is clear, and we must follow it.

The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning. That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending §5845(b). But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning.

There is a simple remedy for the disparate treatment of bump stocks and machineguns. Congress can amend the law—and perhaps would have done so already if ATF had stuck with its earlier interpretation. Now that the situation is clear, Congress can act.

I think Alito concedes too much regarding the lethality of the bump stock for the sake of argument, but his point is irrefutable. The dissent by Justice Sotomayor begins exactly as you would expect, from someone who regards the actual language of a statute as incidental:

On October 1, 2017, a shooter opened fire from a hotel room overlooking an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, Nevada, in what would become the deadliest mass shooting in U. S. history. Within a matter of minutes, using several hundred rounds of ammunition, the shooter killed 58 people and wounded over 500.

It was, as I said, a basic lesson in the rule of law. Democrats have gotten used to working through administrative agencies and the courts to enact rulings and regulations that have come to govern us far more than the actual laws passed by Congress. This process is enabled by the assumption that text is malleable and means what regulators and judges want it to mean. That is the opposite of the rule of law, for which the Supreme Court’s majority–at long as it persists–stands.

BY JOHN HINDERAKER

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/06/a-lesson-in-the-rule-of-law.php