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Page Number: 26.0

2 

GARLAND v. CARGILL 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

ordinary meaning of the statutory text and unsupported by 
context  or  purpose.    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.”  §5845(b).  Be-
cause  I,  like  Congress,  call  that  a  machinegun,  I  respect-
fully dissent. 

I 
A 
  Machineguns were originally developed in the 19th cen-
tury as weapons of war.  See J. Ellis, The Social History of 
the Machine Gun 21–45 (1986) (Ellis).  Smaller and lighter 
submachine guns were not commercially available until the 
1920s.  See Brief for Patrick J. Charles as Amicus Curiae 5 
(Charles  Brief ).    Although  these  weapons  were  originally 
marketed to law enforcement, they inevitably made it into 
the  hands  of  gangsters.  See  id.,  at  8–9;  Ellis  149–165.  
Gangsters like Al Capone used machineguns to rob banks, 
ambush the police, and murder rivals.  See Ellis 153–154, 
157–158.  Newspaper headlines across the country flashed 
“ ‘Gangsters Use Machine Guns,’ ” “ ‘Machine Gun Used in 
Bank Hold-Up,’ ” and “ ‘Machine Gun Thugs Kill Postal Em-
ployee.’ ”  Charles Brief 9. 
  Congress responded in 1934 by sharply restricting civil-
ian ownership of machineguns.  See National Firearms Act 
of 1934, §§3–6, 48 Stat. 1236, 1237–1238.  The Senate Re-
port explaining the 1934 Act emphasized that the “gangster 
as  a  law  violator must be  deprived  of  his most  dangerous 
weapon, the machine gun.”  S. Rep. No. 1444, 73d Cong., 2d 
Sess., 1–2.  “[W]hile there is justification for permitting the 
citizen  to  keep  a  pistol  or  revolver  for  his  own  protec-
tion . . . , there is no reason why anyone except a law officer 
should have a machine gun.”  Id., at 2. 
  These  early  machineguns  allowed  a  shooter  to  fire  in  a