Multiple members of the Supreme Court have proven, in both their words and deeds, that they will consider their personal politics when making decisions. That was clear this week when the court overruled a bill signed by Donald Trump banning bump stocks.
To the surprise of no one, Clarence Thomas led the charge on this one. He wrote in the decision, "We conclude that [a] semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it does not fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.'"
This drew the ire of fellow Justice Sonia Sotomayor who said on the floor, "When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.’ Because I, like Congress, call that a machinegun, I respectfully dissent."
Sotomayor continued:
"This is not a hard case. All of the textual evidence points to the same interpretation. Its interpretation requires six diagrams and an animation to decipher the meaning of the statutory text."