The U.S. Supreme Court has undone years-old restrictions on items called bump stocks, which are used with semi-automatic weapons and, opponents argue, alter the operation of those firearms to substantially mimic a fully automatic weapon.
Notably, the targeted restrictions were originally imposed when Donald Trump was in office as president rather than any Democratic politician. But here we are, anyway.
“Just a reminder- Clarence Thomas is one of the most corrupt Supreme Court justices in American history and needs to immediately be impeached,” remarked anti-gun violence activist David Hogg following the Supreme Court’s decision, which was written by Thomas. Known as an arch-conservative, Thomas is also facing continued outrage over a long list of apparent accommodations from which he benefited — without paying for them, to be clear — that went largely unreported. A concern was the possible fostering of severe conflicts of interest on the part of a leading federal judge.
Hogg, meanwhile, is a survivor of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. The unused school campus is now being torn down. Hogg, alongside other survivors of the incident, has been active in advocacy against gun violence in the time since the original tragedy.
As for bump stocks, CNN said that such an item “replaces a semiautomatic rifle’s regular stock, the part of a gun that rests against the shoulder. It lets shooters use the recoil of the weapon to mimic automatic firing if they hold their trigger finger in place.” The decision at the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of broadly allowing bump stocks again was divided along ideological lines, with the court’s conservative members in favor and the three remaining liberal justices in opposition, calling it dangerous.
The shooter in a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that led to the deaths of a reported 60 people used the equipment in carrying out the attack, spurring the initial restrictions.
