The Man who Took Bump Stocks Gun Accessory to the Supreme Court
My interview with Texan Michael Cargill after he defended his rights in Washington
Michael Cargill intended to lie down for just 5 minutes on Wednesday evening but woke up three hours later at 9 p.m. It had been a big day for the owner of an Austin gun store.
Cargill spent the morning in the chamber of the Supreme Court while lawyers and justices argued over his bump stocks, which are banned gun accessories. I interviewed Cargill by phone this evening.
Mr. Cargill Goes To Washington
What did it feel like to be the subject of a case in the Supreme Court?
“It was a moving experience to be in Washington D.C.,” Cagill replied. “To walk up the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, see the pillars of justice, then to walk into the hallway and make it to the room where history was been made. Then to see them up close and in person and hear all the questions and speak -- very moving.”
Did you ever want to jump up and say something during the 90-minute hearing?
“Yes,” Cargill said and laughed. “But that’s one place where decorum and procedure is so strict.”
Before jumping into the details of the day, I asked Cargill why should his bump stocks case matter to those of us who don’t own them.
“It’s all about administrative agencies— whether OSHA, EPA or ATF,” replied Cargill. “ They can turn millions of people into felons overnight, without Congress having a say.”
Cargill referenced “Schoolhouse Rock” and how a bill becomes a law by going through both houses of Congress and being signed by the White House. “It’s not because an agency of the federal government creates it,” he emphasized.
Bump Stocks Outlawed
Bump stocks, which let you shoot much faster, were banned by the ATF during the Trump administration. The move came after the worst mass shooting in history in 2017 in Las Vegas. The killer used bump stocks and multiple guns to kill 60 people and wound 500.
The ATF banned them by issuing an interpretive rule citing an almost 100-year law that made fully automatic “machine guns” require a government permit as applicable to bump stocks.
Cargill, who owns Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, turned in his last two bump stocks to the local ATF in 2018 when the ruling went into effect. Then he filed suit against the federal government.
(I’ll tell paid subscribers at the end what happened to Cargill’s surrendered bump stocks.)
Trigger Confusion
The Supreme Court hearing Wednesday focused greatly on the technicalities of how the bump stock does or does not affect how the trigger is pulled. (You can read the court transcript here.)
Machine guns work by pulling the trigger once and the rifle continues to fire until you let it go or run out of ammo. The debate is whether a person using a bump stock is taking his finger on and off each time the gadget pushes forward and back.
The justices said they were confused multiple times, even though several said they watched videos to understand the differences.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson clearly supported the ban. “It's really not about the operation of the thing. It's about what it can achieve, what it's being used for,” she said. “The function of this trigger is to cause this kind of damage, 800 rounds a second or whatever."
Cargill mocked Jackson for saying any gun can shoot 800 rounds in seconds.
Agency Rules vs Congress Law
Cargill said the central part of his case has little to do with trigger and mostly to do with the bigger picture of making laws that create felons without going through Congress.
“It’s clear Congress needs to step in and define what is a machine gun if they are going to put bump stocks in the law,” he said.
Justice Neil Gorsuch said, “I can certainly understand why these items should be made illegal.” However, he also pointed out that bump stocks were legal for so long and now an “interpretive rule...saying otherwise that would render between a quarter of a million and a half million people federal felons."
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the ATF changing the interpretation of this law after all these years “ensnare a lot of people who are not aware of the legal prohibition.”
“Intuitively, I am entirely sympathetic to your argument,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Principal Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher, arguing for the government. “I think the question is, why didn’t Congress pass that legislation to make this cover it more clearly?”
Cargill said he doubts the federal government— the Biden administration— has enough “political capital” to have Congress pass a law making bump stock illegal specifically.
Second Amendment Relevant?
Why wasn’t the Second Amendment cited today in court for a gun case?
“We didn't argue the Second Amendment stance at all in this - whether bump stocks are Second Amendment issues,” he said. “My attorneys are constitutional attorneys and focus on the administrative side of it.”
Justice Kavanaugh asked Cargill’s lawyer, former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, why he didn’t argue the Second Amendment in this case.
“We didn't argue that because courts are generally loath to decide constitutional questions when there's an easy statutory off-ramp,” replied Mitchell. He added that the Second Amendment defense would raise the question if bump stocks fall “within the dangerous and unusual weapons carveout in Heller. ” Mitchell said that exception is “vague enough that it's just not clear to us what the answer would be.”
Supreme Court Decision
Even some of the conservative justices seemed to think banning bump stocks was a legitimate gun law, but they differed on whether it could be done through the ATF. Cargill feels good about the ruling.
“We are excited about how things went today. We are pretty optimistic that the Supreme Court will see it in our way and hopefully decide this whole case in my favor,” he said.
But Cagill did not get all positive news after court. While we were talking, he pulled up emails through his store’s website today with truly hateful comments and wishing him dead.