【中美创新时报2024 年 6 月 20 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）当最高法院上周推翻特朗普政府禁止使用撞火枪托时，这为枪支安全倡导者带来了近年来罕见的胜利，它有可能为不仅仅是撞火枪托打开大门。枪支辩论双方的律师和枪支政策专家表示，这项裁决还可能削弱拜登总统限制其他赋予半自动步枪速射能力的枪支配件的努力。《纽约时报》记者杰克·希利（Jack Healy）对此作了下述报道。
2017 年，拉斯维加斯一名枪手在一场音乐会上杀死了 60 人，此后官员们将注意力集中在一种名为撞火枪托的枪支配件上，这种装置可以让步枪以接近机关枪的速度射击。在那次大规模枪击事件之后，特朗普政府禁止使用撞火枪托。
但当最高法院上周推翻这项禁令时，这为枪支安全倡导者带来了近年来罕见的胜利，它有可能为不仅仅是撞火枪托打开大门。枪支辩论双方的律师和枪支政策专家表示，这项裁决还可能削弱拜登总统限制其他赋予半自动步枪速射能力的枪支配件的努力。
联邦官员说，这些装置是替代扳机，被称为“强制复位扳机”或“全开扳机”，允许射手在一次连续扣动扳机的情况下在一分钟内发射 900 多发子弹。
2022 年 3 月，即禁止撞火枪托的禁令发布四年后，烟酒火器和爆炸物管理局也对其中一些扳机装置实施了限制。该机构当时在一封信中表示，这些装置实际上将半自动武器变成了被禁止的机枪。
但现在，律师和专家表示，这些限制可能会因最高法院以 6 比 3 的裁决推翻撞火枪托禁令而被颠覆。法院周五发布裁决后，起诉推翻扳机限制的枪支权利组织的律师立即提交了一封信，称撞火枪托裁决是一项新的权威，“直接影响了本案的核心问题”。
这个问题是：机枪的定义是什么？
机枪在很大程度上是非法的，长期以来一直受到可追溯到 1930 年代的联邦枪支法的严格限制。联邦政府辩称，撞火枪托和强制复位扳机等配件本质上将半自动步枪变成了全自动步枪。
撞火枪托允许步枪在射击时快速前后滑动，利用枪支的后坐力来快速射击。强制复位扳机的工作原理是，在扣动步枪扳机后，快速向前猛击。
这些装置是一类小众改装装置，可以让枪支射击得更快，有时甚至会造成致命后果。
拉斯维加斯演唱会袭击案是美国现代史上最致命的大规模枪击案，枪手拥有 14 支装有撞火枪托的步枪。2022 年，在德克萨斯州乌瓦尔迪的一所学校杀害 19 名儿童和两名教师的枪手拥有“地狱火”扳机装置，尽管他似乎没有使用过。
“最终结果是相似的，”枪支暴力预防组织吉福兹法律中心的法律总监大卫·普西诺 (David Pucino) 说。“从枪手的角度来看，这是自动射击。”
但代表法院保守派多数派的克拉伦斯·托马斯 (Clarence Thomas) 法官表示，“配备撞火枪托的半自动步枪不是‘机关枪’，因为它不能‘通过扳机的一次功能’发射多发子弹。”
枪支权利组织和扳机配件销售商抓住了这句话，称这为他们提供了一条清晰的途径来争辩说，ATF 2022 年关于强制复位扳机的决定也应该被推翻。他们辩称，强制复位扳机的机制使其与真正的机枪有所区别，无论是在实践上还是在法律上。
ATF 拒绝置评，理由是诉讼尚未结束。
联邦特工试图打击他们所谓的使用强制复位扳机的非法机枪改装行为。检察官对波多黎各的一名男子和德克萨斯州的另一名男子提起刑事指控，罪名是非法持有扳机改装件。根据法庭记录，一些枪支拥有者将他们的扳机装置交给了 ATF 特工，而不是冒着被起诉的风险。
尽管有这些限制，但类似的扳机装置仍然可以在网上以 300 美元的价格买到。在 YouTube 视频中，枪支拥有者演示了如何安装强制复位扳机，并在几秒钟内发射数十发子弹。枪支权利支持者表示，这些装置是受宪法保护的枪支改装件。
据法庭文件显示，联邦政府还追查了 Rare Breed Triggers，这是一家在德克萨斯州运营的公司，该公司向客户保证这些装置“绝对”合法。
据法庭记录显示，该公司在 2020 年 12 月开始销售强制复位扳机后不久就受到了联邦的审查，并在两年内销售了 10 万台这种设备。据法庭记录显示，2021 年 7 月，ATF 向该公司发出了一封信，要求其停止销售这些设备。
联邦政府在纽约起诉该公司，称 Rare Breed 违反了联邦枪支法，并向 ATF 隐瞒了信息。
少数强制复位扳机的拥有者决定抗争，并于 2023 年 8 月与全国枪支权利协会联手，在德克萨斯州的联邦法院提起诉讼。他们辩称，ATF 超越了其权限。
现在起诉拜登政府限制扳机的团体表示，自最高法院发布撞火枪托裁决以来，他们觉得自己的地位得到了加强。枪支管制组织表示，他们担心最高法院为更多的枪支改造打开了大门，这将使速射步枪在全国范围内普及。
“攻击性武器已经很危险了，”Everytown for Gun Safety 法律和政策高级副总裁 Nick Suplina 在一封电子邮件中说道。他说，这些修改“使这个致命问题更加严重。”
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
题图：犹他州南乔丹的 The Gun Vault 中，一把半自动步枪上装有撞火枪托。最高法院推翻了对 2017 年在拉斯维加斯杀死 60 人的枪手使用的速射步枪撞火枪托的禁令。RICK BOWMER/美联社
附原英文报道：
Supreme Court ruling on bump stocks could open door to more lethal weapons
By Jack Healy New York Times,Updated June 19, 2024
PHOENIX — After a gunman in Las Vegas killed 60 people at a concert in 2017, officials focused on a gun accessory known as a bump stock, a device that allows a rifle to fire at nearly the rate of a machine gun. Bump stocks were banned by the Trump administration after that mass shooting.
But when the Supreme Court last week struck down that ban, which had been a rare victory for gun-safety advocates in recent years, it had the potential to open the door not just to bump stocks. The ruling could also undercut President Biden’s efforts to restrict other gun accessories that give semiautomatic rifles rapid-fire capabilities, lawyers and gun-policy experts on both sides of the gun debate said.
The devices are replacement triggers known as “forced-reset triggers” or “wide-open triggers” that allow shooters to fire more than 900 rounds in a minute with one continuous squeeze, federal officials say.
In March 2022, four years after the ban on bump stocks was issued, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also imposed restrictions on some of these trigger devices. The agency said in a letter at the time that the devices effectively turned semiautomatic weapons into prohibited machine guns.
But now, lawyers and experts said that those restrictions could be upended by the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling overturning the ban on bump stocks. Immediately after the court issued its ruling Friday, lawyers for gun-rights groups suing to overturn the trigger restrictions filed a letter citing the bump-stock decision as a new authority that “weighs directly on a central question in this case.”
That question is: What defines a machine gun?
Machine guns are largely illegal, and have long been tightly restricted under federal gun laws stretching back to the 1930s. The federal government has argued that accessories like bump stocks and forced-reset triggers essentially convert semiautomatic rifles into fully automatic ones.
Bump stocks allow a rifle to rapidly slide back and forth as it fires, harnessing the gun’s recoil to create a fast burst of shots. Forced-reset triggers work by quickly snapping a rifle’s trigger forward after it is pulled.
The devices are among a niche group of modifications that allow guns to shoot faster, sometimes with deadly results.
The shooter in the Las Vegas concert attack, the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, had 14 rifles outfitted with bump stocks. The shooter who killed 19 children and two teachers at a school in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 had a “hellfire” trigger device, though he did not appear to have used it.
“The end result is similar,” said David Pucino, legal director of the Giffords Law Center, a gun-violence prevention group. “From the perspective of the shooter, it’s automatic fire.”
But Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court’s conservative majority, said that “a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machine gun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’”
Gun-rights groups and sellers of trigger accessories seized on that line, saying that it gave them a clear path to argue that the ATF’s 2022 decision on forced-reset triggers should also be struck down. They argue that the mechanism of a forced-reset trigger differentiates it from a true machine gun, both practically and in the eyes of the law.
The ATF declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Federal agents have sought to crack down on what they call illegal machine gun conversions using forced-reset triggers. Prosecutors criminally charged one man in Puerto Rico and another in Texas for illegally possessing trigger modifications. Some gun owners have surrendered their trigger devices to ATF agents rather than risk prosecution, according to court records.
Despite the restrictions, similar trigger devices are still available online for $300. In YouTube videos, gun owners demonstrate how to install forced-reset triggers and fire dozens of bullets in a few seconds. Gun-rights supporters say the devices are constitutionally protected gun modifications.
The federal government has also gone after Rare Breed Triggers, a company operating out of Texas that assured customers that the devices were “absolutely” legal, according to court papers.
The company drew federal scrutiny soon after it started selling forced-reset triggers in December 2020, and sold 100,000 of the devices over two years, according to court records. In July 2021, the ATF sent the company a letter telling it to stop selling the devices, according to court records.
The federal government sued the company in New York, saying that Rare Breed had broken federal gun laws and had withheld information from the ATF.
A handful of owners of forced-reset triggers decided to fight, and in August 2023, they joined with the National Association for Gun Rights and sued in federal court in Texas. They argued that the ATF had overstepped its authority.
The groups now suing the Biden administration over the trigger restrictions said they felt as if their position had strengthened since the Supreme Court issued its bump-stock decision. Gun-control groups said they were worried that the Supreme Court had opened the door for more gun modifications that will allow rapid-fire rifles to proliferate nationally.
“Assault weapons are dangerous already,” Nick Suplina, the senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, said in an email. The modifications, he said, “make this deadly problem even worse.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
