New York leaders blasted a US Supreme Court decision Friday that reversed a ban on bump stocks, the devices favored by mass shooters that effectively turn semiautomatic weapons into machine guns.
The 6-3 ruling by the nation’s top court overturned a Trump-era federal prohibition.
New York City’s local ban on the rapid-fire device will remain in effect, Mayor Eric Adams said.
But Adams said in a statement, “While these devices remain illegal in New York City, this decision — and the legacy of this Supreme Court — makes our country less safe.”
Bump stocks have been put to deadly use in mass shootings such as the 2017 slaughter that killed 58 people at a Las Vegas country music festival.
Former President Donald Trump’s administration banned the device in 2019, and the Empire State followed suit the next year.
But bump stocks have still been illegally used, includin gagainst New Yorkers by the racist in the 2022 Buffalo mass shooting.
Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a statement Friday in which she erroneously linked the illegal use of bump stocks to the 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket where a white supremecist killed 10 black people.
“Exactly one month ago, we marked the anniversary of the deadly Buffalo massacre — the horrific day when a hate-fueled gunman murdered ten of our neighbors, using a bump stock to transform his firearm into an even deadlier weapon.”
She repeated the mistake in a post on X which she later deleted.
Asked later about the misstatement by the Associated Press, Hochul spokesperson Maggie Halley said the governor had only been speaking “generally” about “dangerous, illegal modifications” of weapons made to inflict mass casualties “including bump stocks.”
Attorney General Letitia James — who has engaged in a high-profile legal battle with the NRA — also condemned the decision.
“This decision jeopardizes the safety of every community in this country,” she tweeted.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, found that bump stocks cannot be considered illegal machine guns.
“We conclude that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ [sic] because it does not fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger,’ ” he wrote.
State Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, who chairs New York’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian caucus, noted the ruling came during Gun Violence Awareness Month.
“While Justice Clarence Thomas’ explanation of a fully automatic weapon may legally justify the use of this accessory, it does not change the fact that it has enabled individuals to claim the lives of countless innocent Americans across the country,” she said in a statement.
With Post wires