The full Fifth Circuit Court voted 13-3 that bump stocks are not machineguns and those devices are once again for sale in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. This ruling has created a "circuit split" where the same issue is legal in one circuit and illegal in other circuits. The Supreme Court hates circuit splits and often takes a case to resolve the issue. So far, DOJ has not appealed the ruling and the man that started the whole thing, Michael Cargill is now selling bump stocks again in his Austin gun store. Who knows where this will go?
From the Court's ruling:
The Government’s regulation violates these principles. As an initial matter, it purports to allow ATF—rather than Congress—to set forth the scope of criminal prohibitions. Indeed, the Government would outlaw bump stocks by administrative fiat even though the very same agency routinely interpreted the ban on machine guns as not applying to the type of bump stocks at issue here. Nor can we say that the statutory definition unambiguously supports the Government’s interpretation. As noted above, we conclude that it unambiguously does not. But even if we are wrong, the statute is at least ambiguous in this regard. And if the statute is ambiguous, Congress must cure that ambiguity, not the federal courts.
I love to see Clarence Thomas get a chance to decide this issue.