O’Melveny Represents Giffords, Brady, and Everytown as Amici in Gun Safety Victory Before DC Circuit

In a major victory for O’Melveny pro bono clients Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Brady, and Everytown for Gun Safety, the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that “bump stocks”—devices that convert semiautomatic rifles into automatic weapons—constitute “machine guns” within the meaning of the National Firearms Act and upheld the government’s regulation banning of the devices.

O’Melveny’s amicus brief was cited in the opinion’s crucial examination of the lethality and ease of use of bump stock-equipped rifles in line with Congressional “concern for the danger posed by machine guns centered on their destructive potential and exacerbation of serious crime.”

The D.C. Circuit’s decision forecloses a key work-around to Congress’s ban on automatic firearms—one that was exploited to deadly effect in 2017 by a gunman who used a bump stock device to rapidly fire more than a thousand rounds into a Las Vegas crowd of music festival attendees, killing 60 and wounding hundreds.