Justice Alito, concurring in Garland v. Cargill (decided Friday, with the majority opinion by Justice Thomas):
I join the opinion of the Court because there is simply no other way to read the statutory language. There can be little doubt that the Congress that enacted 26 U. S. C. §5845(b) would not have seen any material difference between a machinegun and a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock. But the statutory text is clear, and we must follow it.
The horrible shooting spree in Las Vegas in 2017 did not change the statutory text or its meaning. That event demonstrated that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun, and it thus strengthened the case for amending §5845(b). But an event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning.
There is a simple remedy for the disparate treatment of bump stocks and machineguns. Congress can amend the law—and perhaps would have done so already if ATF had stuck with its earlier interpretation. Now that the situation is clear, Congress can act.
Agreed. When the text is clear, interpreters should not speculate about what the enactors would have wanted, had the enactors thought about the situation the court now confronts. For this point in a completely different context, see the last part of this article (on a question of constitutional interpretation).
The dissent in Cargill relies on the presumption against ineffectiveness — which is a legitimate linguistic canon (discussed in Scalia & Garner's Reading Law, pp. 63-65). But as the Scalia & Garner discussion makes clear, it only applies in cases of true ambiguity, which the majority found not to exist in Cargill.
Posted at 6:32 AM