Takeaways from the Supreme Court arguments over bump stocks and machine guns

CNN —

The Supreme Court’s conservatives pressed the Biden administration Wednesday to justify a federal ban on bump stocks, a device that can convert a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon that can fire far more rapidly.

But after 90 minutes of argument in the high-profile dispute, it appeared that the court was deeply divided over whether or not to strike it down.

Approved during former President Donald Trump’s administration, the bump stocks ban was created in response to the Las Vegas shooting in 2017 in which a single gunman who was later found with the bump stock devices fired on a concert and killed 58 people.

This 2017 photo shows a bump stock installed on an AR-15 rifle at Blue Ridge Arsenal in Chantilly, Virgina.

Related live-story Supreme Court hears challenge to federal bump stock ban

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump nominee, worried that the prohibition would “ensnare” Americans who weren’t aware of it.

“Even if you’re not aware of the legal prohibition, you can be convicted,” Kavanaugh told the attorney representing the Biden administration. “That’s going to ensnare a lot of people who were not are of the legal prohibition.”

Though the appeal doesn’t involve the Second Amendment, it once again thrusts the fraught debate over guns onto the Supreme Court’s docket as the nation continues to reel from mass shootings. It’s also the latest of several important cases this year that will give the court’s 6-3 conservative majority an opportunity to limit the power of federal agencies.

Here are the key takeaways from oral arguments:

Barrett and Gorsuch suggest Congress needed to approve a ban

One central theme of the arguments was the question of whether Congress – rather than the Bureau of Alcohol,