What to know about bump stocks and the Supreme Court ruling striking down a ban on the gun accessory | KLRT [Video]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down a ban on bump stocks, the gun accessory used in the deadliest shooting in modern American history — a Las Vegas massacre that killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.

The court’s conservative majority said Friday that then-President Donald Trump’s administration overstepped its authority with the 2019 ban on the firearm attachment, which allows semiautomatic weapons to fire like machine guns.

Here’s what to know about the case:

What are bump stocks?

Bump stocks are accessories that replace a rifle’s stock, the part that gets pressed against the shooter’s shoulder. When a person fires a semiautomatic weapon fitted with a bump stock, it uses the gun’s recoil energy to rapidly and repeatedly bump the trigger against the shooter’s finger.

That allows the weapon to fire dozens of bullets in a matter of seconds.

Bump stocks were invented in the early 2000s after the expiration of a 1994 ban targeting assault weapons. …