Friday marked a big win for gun rights advocates when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Trump administration-era ban on bump stocks by the ATF. In their immediate reactions to the 6-3 ruling, CNN Newsroom pontificators were largely unhappy with the court’s affirmation of a piece of plastic not being a machine gun and lauded the “fiery” dissenting opinion authored by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Of course, the opinion just flaunted their ignorance of firearm mechanics.
Chief legal analyst Paula Reid seemed rather disinterested while reading the majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, who explained the technical details of the mechanical workings of a firearm that would lead to a machine gun designation:
let me read you the top of Justice Thomas's opinion. The majority here. He writes that, “Congress has long restricted access to machine guns, a category of firearms defined by the ability to shoot automatically more than one shot by a single function of the trigger. Now, these are semi-automatic firearms which require shooters to re-engage the trigger for every shot are not machine guns.” He says, “This case asked whether bump stock, an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle. that allows the shooter to rapidly re-engage the trigger and therefore achieve a high rate of fire, converts the rifle into a machine gun. They hold that it does not.”
She followed up by lauding Sotomayor’s “fiery” but ultimately ignorant take on machine gun mechanics. “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. A bump stock-equipped semi-automatic rifle fires automatically more than one shot without manual reloading by a single function of the trigger. Because I, like Congress, call that a machine gun,” the liberal justice proclaimed.
To use her duck analogy against her; Sotomayor might see a creature with a bill and webbed feet that lays eggs and loves to swim, but what she’s calling a duck is actually a platypus (Not to be confused with the 1911 Platypus from Stealth Arms, particularly their “Perry the” model).
“And yes, you can read from that dissent from Sotomayor. She's frustrated and she's been making it clear. She's been frustrated lately on the Supreme Court,” host Jim Acosta sympathized with her.
Luckily, Republican strategist and owner of GunsOut, LLC Shermichael Singleton was on set to school the liberals on the basic mechanics of firearms:
There is a distinction between a bump stock and a fully auto weapon. I don't want to get into the nuances of the intricacies of this, but a bump stock uses the reciprocation recoil in order for the rifle to fire at a quicker rate than one pulling your finger. But I'm a competitive shooter. If you're a competitive shooter, you can fire a weapon pretty quickly, generally speaking, anyway. Fully auto allows the trigger to disengage and cycle freely. That is a huge mechanical difference between the two.
“[So,] when you read that quote from Justice Thomas and this is not a machine gun, he is effectively accurate in that description, and that's an important thing to point out,” he argued.
It all seemed to go over Acosta’s head as he shifted to former Biden assistant Meghan Hays for the emotional reaction. “This is really going to frustrate progressives,” he teed her up.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
CNN Newsroom
June 14, 2024
10:28:12 – 10:31:49 a.m. Eastern(…)
JIM ACOSTA: And I do want to try to get a response from Meghan and Shermichael. You're both here. And, Shermichael, you own a gun company. You've talked about this issue in the past. Quick reaction from you, and then I want to get back to Paula Reid.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON (CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR): Yeah I mean, look, I'm not surprised by the decision. I'm also not surprised that it was authored by Justice Thomas, who also authored the Bruen v. New York case in 2022.
There is a distinction between a bump stock and a fully auto weapon. I don't want to get into the nuances of the intricacies of this, but a bump stock uses the reciprocation recoil in order for the rifle to fire at a quicker rate than one pulling your finger. But I'm a competitive shooter. If you're a competitive shooter, you can fire a weapon pretty quickly, generally speaking, anyway.
Fully auto allows the trigger to disengage and cycle freely. That is a huge mechanical difference between the two. So, when that -- when you read that quote from Justice Thomas and this is not a machine gun, he is effectively accurate in that description, and that's an important thing to point out.
ACOSTA: This is really going to frustrate progressives, Meghan.
MEGHAN HAYS (FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT BIDEN): Absolutely. And, look, I worked for MGM Resorts when this shooting happened, this was devastating to the community. This was devastating, not only financially to the company, but devastating to the community emotionally. This is going to have a huge impact. And, I mean, again, Congress does need to act. The president can't do anything further as we just saw President Trump got overturned. So, I mean, this is going to be -- I think people will rally around this, and this will be another call to action for Democrats.
EVAN PEREZ: One last quick thing. I mean, this was -- the bump stock thing had been, you know, knocking around, to your point, even in the Obama administration. There had been this effort to address this. And in the Obama administration, they had decided we can't go that far. It doesn't work. The ATF had decided this doesn't work under the current law. And in the Trump administration, they had taken a second look and said, ‘no, actually we can do this.’
And so that's the irony here is that, you know, it's the Trump administration, as you pointed out, that had a very conservative view on this, that they're the ones that decided to do this when the Obama administration had decided that the law that the current statutes did not support the ATF being able to put this rule into effect.
ACOSTA: And Paula, let me get back to you. You have more on this.
PAUL REID: Yeah we’re taking the time to go through this opinion and for anyone, just tuning in, let me read you the top of Justice Thomas's opinion. The majority here. He writes that, “Congress has long restricted access to machine guns, a category of firearms defined by the ability to shoot automatically more than one shot by a single function of the trigger. Now, these are semi-automatic firearms which require shooters to re-engage the trigger for every shot are not machine guns.” He says, “This case asked whether bump stock, an accessory for a semi-automatic rifle. that allows the shooter to rapidly re-engage the trigger and therefore achieve a high rate of fire, converts the rifle into a machine gun. They hold that it does not.”
But in a fiery descent, his liberal colleagues disputed this. For example, Justice Sotomayor wrote, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. A bump stock-equipped semi-automatic rifle fires automatically more than one shot without manual reloading by a single function of the trigger. Because I, like Congress, call that a machine gun, I respectfully dissent.” So, a pretty fiery dissent from the liberal justices.
Now Jim, we are still waiting for 20 other outstanding opinions from the high court, including that big other gun question that we were talking about earlier. There'll be no more opinions today, but we do expect to get more later next week all right.
ACOSTA: All right. Very interesting. And yes, you can read from that dissent from Sotomayor. She's frustrated and she's been making it clear. She's been frustrated lately on the Supreme Court.
