The United States Supreme Court has just struck down the ban on bump stocks, a gun accessory that was prohibited in 2019 after the mass shooting in Las Vegas two years earlier. The massacre left nearly 500 people injured and 60 people dead. The shooter fired over 1,000 rounds of ammunition using bump stocks, which lead to the initial ruling to outlaw their use in civilian life.
Part of the world coming apart at the seams is when the following observation by Christopher Hitchens rears its head, time and time again: “Very often in my experience, the extraneous or irrelevant complexities are inserted when a matter of elementary justice or principle is at issue.” This serves as a useful vector to identify hucksterism and malevolence generally, and is especially pertinent in the gun debate due to the compounding setbacks it engenders.
Established in 1934, the National Firearms Act defines a machine gun as “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.” Every word of this is about to matter, because the majority opinion (6-3) argues that bump stocks should not be classified as illegal machine guns since they do not allow the shooter to automatically fire more than one shot using only a single pull of the trigger.
Bump stocks are sometimes referred to as slide fire adaptors, both of which gesture at how the attachment functions. It is applied to the butt of a rifle to aid the recoil of the weapon. Once the weapon is fired, it replaces the gun’s stock which allows for the rifle to cycle back and forth at a rapid pace, causing the trigger to bump the finger of the shooter. The speed at which this is done has been noted to approach the pace of a machine gun. The Supreme Court even acknowledges this fact. For reference, the Las Vegas shooter was able to fire over 90 rounds in 10 seconds. A fully automatic rifle could fire just under 100 shots in 7 seconds.
In the ruling, issued by Justice Thomas, it is argued that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has an inconsistent position on the definition of a machine gun and "exceeded" its authority by banning bump stocks. The main conclusion is the following:
A semiautomatic rifle + a bump stock ≠ machine gun.
The Supreme Court deploys a few reasons to support the former justification. The first stipulation refers back to the last part of the 1934 definition. What is meant by “a single function of the trigger”? The Supreme Court replies that the phrase “refers to the mode of action by which the trigger activates the firing mechanism.” Simple enough.
However, the ATF argued:
“[A] shooter using a bump stock must pull the trigger only one time to initiate a bump-firing sequence of multiple shots. This initial trigger pull sets off a sequence—fire, recoil, bump, fire—that allows the weapon to continue firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.”
And finally, the Supreme Court’s infinite wisdom:
“[The former] argument rests on the mistaken premise that there is a difference between the shooter flexing his finger to pull the trigger and pushing the firearm forward to bump the trigger against his stationary trigger.” [Note: Observers will realize that last word should be finger, but this is a direct citation from the ruling as of 15 June. This creates a truly wonderful irony to relish: such a precise distinction rendered incoherent by a lack of attention to detail.]
The second condition is the nature of the term “automatic”. Once again, the 1934 definition says that the action required for a rifle to fire rounds automatically is a single function of the trigger. The statutory definition is violated, argues the Supreme Court, since a shooter must also press forward on the front grip of the rifle with his other hand, thereby resulting in a dual function. Even though the ATF argued that fully automatic weapons also require additional “manual input” from the shooter, the point does not matter with such a specific definition of the automatic requirement.
And there you have it. Bump stocks are back on the streets.
It is astounding that the former argumentative powers are supposed to exhibit the preeminent shrewdness of America’s top justice officials. This is a bad day for the law. These nuances, even if keenly and rightly identified, are not in service of creating a better, safer country. Nevertheless, the argument itself is interesting for another reason. It seems to be about the existence of a thing. Specifically, it concerns the definition of a machine gun. Therefore, the Supreme Court case could also be classified under the umbrella of the following question: when does a machine gun come into existence?
There is a problem in philosophy known as the special composition question. Peter van Inwagen (1990) describes it as “the question of when a plurality of objects adds up to, or composes some object”. Said differently, it concerns the metaphysical question of when multiple objects are assembled to fashion a new object. And crucially, it asks: at what point does this occur?
The best illustration of this issue comes from James Van Cleve (2008) with an example of a fishing rod:
“[I]magine a hook, a line, and a pole that I buy in order to make a fishing rod. When the three components lie in separate bins at the hardware store, they do not (according to likely moderate principles) compose any further object. Side by side on my workbench, they still do not compose a new object. When the line is tied tightly enough around the hook at one end and the pole at the other, they do compose a new object. But what happens before the knots are tight? What if the diameter of the knots is several times that of the pole, so that lifting the pole leaves the line behind? What if the diameter is now one millimeter less? You get the idea: to avoid objectionable arbitrariness or indeterminacy, we must say that the three components always [or never] composed a further thing.”
When an object, such as an IKEA table or fishing rod, is in the process of being put together, when do the various components create a new object? You will notice there are only three possible options: a) Always, b) Never, and c) Sometimes.
The last option is not taken too seriously because one’s ontological commitments necessarily become fractured and a bit inconsistent. Thus, we are left with always and never. The latter might seem ludicrous to argue because surely at some point a table, or fishing rod, is assembled. Proponents of this nihilist view might argue that the level at which objects exist is very narrow, because we are only really talking about particles that are composed in a table-wise fashion. That rabbit hole would be a bad detour at the moment, so consider instead the universal position, the always reply, in the context of the gun debate.
A semiautomatic rifle is a neatly classified object, along with a machine gun. Bump stocks introduce a third object, somewhere along the spectrum of the first two. It has already been demonstrated that the functional capability of a rifle with a bump stock can approach extremely similar outputs as machine guns, with slight variations. The issue, though, is that there is no name for this object. It has not been labeled because it can only be described in reference to the other pre-established, unambiguous, determinate objects. But it clearly exists! It has been utilized to end the lives of many innocent people. It might be a gradation lower than a fully automatic weapon, but it exhibits much of the same results.
These unnamed objects, forged by the aid of bump stocks, approach the vertical asymptote of a machine gun but never cross it. Perhaps this sheds light on the need for the law, especially in cases of ambiguity, to focus less on the material composition of objects, and more so on their application. Otherwise, these new objects formed by supplemental parts need to be named and regulated. The difference in flexing one’s finger and having the trigger bump up against it should not be the consequential factor with such an important issue. There are matters of elementary justice at stake.