Circuit judges with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed district judge Staci Yandle’s summary judgment award in favor of government defendants in a class action over bump stock devices.
Circuit judges Raymond Chen, Tiffany Cunningham and Leonard Stark filed the decision on Oct. 31.
Wood River attorney Thomas Maag represented plaintiff John Doe in the appeal.
Washington D.C. attorney Bradley Hinshelwood argued on behalf of defendants President Joe Biden Jr., Attorney General Merrick Garland and Marvin Richardson, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
The class action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois in response to the Department of Justice’s Final Rule adopted in December 2018, retroactively redefining bump-fire stocks as machine guns under the National Firearms Act of 1934 and Gun Control Act of 1968. Until the new rule was published, the ATF had classified certain bump-stocks as firearm “parts.”
The appellate decision states that bump stocks “allow a semi-automatic firearm to shoot more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger by harnessing the recoil energy of the semi-automatic firearm to which it is affixed so that the trigger resets and continues firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.”
Prior to the Final Rule, some bump stocks were not classified as machine guns and could be sold without serial numbers, background checks and the need to comply with other federal regulations applicable to firearms. Those regulations were amended following a mass shooting on Oct. 1, 2017, at a country music festival in Las Vegas. A gunman fired more than 1,000 rounds from his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, killing 58 and injuring approximately 500 while using a bump stock device.
Maag wrote in Doe’s suit that the DOJ officially announced that anyone who possesses the devices must either destroy them or surrender them to the ATF without compensation within a 90-day period, which is considered ATF’s Final Rule.
Doe’s suit alleges the ATF violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not declaring an amnesty-and-registration period for devices that were previously excluded.
The suit states that Doe seeks to lawfully register the devices in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. If registration is legally impossible, then Doe seeks “just compensation under the Fifth Amendment, for a total regulatory and/or actual taking.”
Maag asks the court to find that an amnesty registration period would provide an immunity for registered firearms. He also asks the court to find that “defendants have abused their discretion and acted arbitrarily and capriciously.”
Yandle granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on all counts, finding that an amnesty period would violate the prohibition on machine guns. She rejected the plaintiff’s Commerce Clause challenge and direct tax argument.
Yandle also concluded that Doe has no fundamental right to possess a machine gun and there is “nothing irrational about Congress differentiating between machinegun possession by law enforcement and possession by civilians.”
She further held that Doe’s takings claim fails because “classification and seizure of contraband is one of the most basic exercises of the police power - it does not implicate the Takings Clause.”
Doe filed an appeal.
The appellate court affirmed Yandle’s findings.