A prominent House Democrat and lawyer on Friday blasted the Supreme Court for striking down a ban on so-called “bump stocks” — a rapid-fire gun attachment used in the 2017 massacre in Las Vegas — calling it “outrageous,” and pointing out that the federal agency governing such weapons even thinks its an assault weapon.
The Supreme Court on Friday struck down the Trump-era ban, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor providing a scathing dissent.
“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she wrote. “A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.’ §5845(b). Because I, like Congress, call that a machinegun, I respectfully dissent.”
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin couldn’t agree more with the justice.
Raskin appeared Friday night on “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” to point out Sotomayor wasn’t the only one saying “this bird quacked like a duck and walked like a duck.”
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“It was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,” he said. “It was the governing agency which said that a semiautomatic weapon equipped with a bump stock operates exactly like a machine gun and should be treated that way.”
Raskin then went on the attack against former President Donald Trump — who he said “pretended” to support the bump stock ban following the slaughter as a substitute for universal violent criminal background check and a complete ban on military-style assault weapons — as well as conservative justices on the court.
“The Flag of America they fly upside down,” Raskin said, a direct reference to reports that an upside-down American flag was seen flying at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house after President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.”The flag of the NRA they fly right-side up, and they fly it very high. Way above the rule of law, way above the Constitution and the public safety of the people.”
Watch the clip below or at this link.