Kramer Levin Files Amicus Brief in the US Supreme Court on Behalf of the American Medical Association and Other Health Care Providers in Support of the Federal Prohibition of Bump Stocks

On Dec. 26, 2023, Kramer Levin filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the American College of Surgeons. The brief, filed in Garland v. Cargill, supports reversal of a Fifth Circuit decision that 26 U.S.C. 5845(b), the federal law that prohibits civilian ownership of machineguns, does not apply to bump stocks that enable semi-automatic firearms, with a single pull of the trigger, to initiate the continuous firing cycle of a machinegun.

The brief provides the firsthand experiences of 15 distinguished emergency physicians, surgeons, pediatricians, other health care providers and firearm violence researchers from across the country. Many have witnessed the devastation military assault-style weapons inflict, and have treated victims of some of the most notorious mass-casualty shootings, including at Aurora, Columbine, Las Vegas, Newton, Oak Creek and San Bernardino. They describe the extraordinary lethality of shootings involving such weapons and the physical and psychological consequences for victims, their children, other family members, neighbors, bystanders, first responders and hospital staff. 

For example, Dr. Martin Schreiber, a chief of the Division of Trauma, Critical Care and Acute Surgery at Oregon Health & Science University and a colonel in the U.S. Army, observes that the AR-15 has been used in at least 10 of the 17 most deadly mass shootings in America and that when the AR-15 is combined with a bump stock it becomes a machinegun, suitable for the battlefield. An AR-15 modified with a bump stock fires 600 rounds per minute, similar to an M-16 automatic military rifle. When such weapons cause injuries to the head, Dr. Schreiber explains, “survival is virtually impossible.” Dr. Babak Sarani, professor of surgery and emergency medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and the director of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery at The GW Medical Faculty Associates, notes that with every round fired, the probability of a shot striking the head increases. 

Dr. Thomas Lew, assistant clinical professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and attending physician at Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley, recounts that in 2017 his family was on vacation in Las Vegas when a shooter in their hotel fired AR-15-style rifles, several modified with bump stocks, into a music festival, killing 60 men, women and children and wounding hundreds of others. Members of Dr. Lew’s family were just floors below the shooter. They barricaded themselves in a room with other vacationers and prayed. Dr. William Begg, an emergency physician and the Endowed Chair of Emergency Medicine at Danbury and New Milford hospitals, was the emergency physician on duty at Danbury Hospital during the morning of the Sandy Hook mass shooting. He describes the horror of the scene — each child endured three to 11 gunshot wounds — and the particular damage to the body that AR-15 bullets cause when they explode, obliterating organs and leaving nothing to resuscitate. The lethality is only made worse by bump stocks. 

The mass casualties resulting from shootings involving automatic weapons overwhelm treatment centers, stretching resources thin. Dr. Jeffrey Sankoff reports that an American College of Emergency Physicians task force is considering how to import military strategies into the civilian sector to manage the casualties. The cost associated with these plans is enormous. Federal grants reimburse only a fraction. Dr. Kathleen Clem, an emergency physician at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and a professor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth University, observes that the awful effects of the use of military assault weapons are not confined to the gunshot victims. The families, the hospital staff and the entire community are deeply impacted. 

As mass shootings proliferate in this country, allowing bump stock devices increases the likelihood of more catastrophic and deadly outcomes. Common sense dictates that should not be allowed to happen. The federal ban on machineguns should correctly be applied to bump stocks. A three-judge Fifth Circuit panel found the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulation adopted in the wake of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting correctly determined that bump stock type devices are “machineguns” as defined in Section 5845(b). One year later, the Fifth Circuit en banc reversed. Our brief summarizes the research that shows that prohibiting the use of bump stock devices to convert semi-automatic firearms into automatic weapons saves lives. The brief argues that when Congress enacted the National Firearms Act of 1934 to prevent civilian use of automatic weapons, it cannot have intended to allow devices (such as bump stocks) that transform firearms into the very weapons the act sought to prohibit. 

Read the brief here.