Supreme Court arming far-right extremists with deadly weapons for Trump's battle

The bump stock decision will make it easier for MAGA terrorists to kill many people, as Trump and his supporters continue to threaten violence.

House Speaker Mike Johnson lied yet again last week when he said on Fox News, in discussing undocumented immigrants coming across the border who allegedly included foreign terrorists, “We believe there's probably terror cells set up around the United States now.”

Notice the words “we believe” and “probably.” Mike Johnson, “as a Gang of Eight leader,“ as Brian Beutler noted, “gets briefed on sensitive intelligence, and if there were ‘probably terror cells set up around the United States’ he’d know.”

A complete lie. The most alarming concern for law enforcement right now regards terrorism from the far-right and white supremacists—the people Johnson and Donald Trump inspire—and those are the only plots or threats that have come on the radar.

Last week, we learned an Arizona man was indicted after he “had discussions with two individuals working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to devise a plan to commit a mass shooting of African Americans and other minorities to incite a race war prior to the 2024 United States Presidential Election,” according to a press release from the Department of Justice. He was going to attack concertgoers attending a Bad Bunny concert in Atlanta, shouting “KKK all the way.”

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A Texas man was also arrested last week after making a threat against an FBI agent involved in the Hunter Biden investigation, saying that if Trump wins, we’re “gonna start throwing you [expletive]s in jail” and “if you can steal another election…then the guns will come out."

After Trump’s 34-count felony conviction, violent threats came fast and furious from MAGA world, as reported by MSNBC:

Reuters reported on Thursday that Trump supporters have flooded corners of the internet with calls for riots and violent retribution against jurors in the trial and Judge Juan Merchan. There have also been calls online to dox the jurors, Merchan, and journalists, according to Advance Democracy, a group that monitors right-wing social media.

Violent political threats over the trial had soared even before Trump was convicted on Thursday, but the anger and indignation emanating from the right since he was found guilty have been notable. Right-wing media figures vowed to seek vengeance.

Those were among the threats and plots we learned of in recent weeks—far-right domestic terrorism—while Mike Johnson was telling us there were “probably” foreign “terror cells set up around the United States.” No, Mike Johnson, the terror cells don’t need to be “set up” because they’re already here—home-grown, as it’s called—organizing among those in your own political base.

Make no mistake, the individuals recently arrested were plotting violence in the name of Trump and MAGA, and we’ve not seen Trump or the GOP condemn them because they clearly want that threat out there. Trump threatens violence just about every other day, in an interview or at a rally. He’s calling his loyal foot soldiers to order, embracing many of their own deranged ideas about fomenting a new civil war. The Proud Boys, who Trump commanded to “stand back and stand by” in a debate in 2020—and which followed his order, helping to foment violence on January 6th—is rebuilding, ready to battle for Trump again.

And the Supreme Court last week gave these extremists more lethal weapons to kill as many people as possible, ruling that the government’s ban on bump stocks for use with semi-automatic weapons is unconstitutional. From 400 to 800 shots can be fired per minute with a bump stock on an AR-style rifle, as opposed to 180 shots per minute for a trained shooter without a bump stock.

The six right-wing Supreme Court justices in the majority tied themselves in knots in trying to explain that bump stocks don’t turn a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun—banned by Congress in 1934—because the bump stock doesn’t allow the gun to operate “by a single function of the trigger.” This is pretty ludicrous because the bump stock works by having the stock “bump” back and forth between one’s shoulder and trigger finger, making the rifle shoot rapidly. For all practical purposes, it becomes a machine gun.

It’s why the Las Vegas shooter in 2017 was able to kill 58 people and wound over 850, shooting over 1000 bullets in 11 minutes. Justice Sotomayor called out the bullshit for the three liberals who dissented, speaking from the bench.

“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,” Sotomayor wrote regarding what the gun becomes with a bump stock added. “Today’s decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences. The majority’s artificially narrow definition hamstrings the government’s efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.”

The big question is: Why does anyone need a bump stock? There is only one answer: to kill as many people as possible very quickly.

The Supreme Court’s conservatives couched their decision as one over whether the president—in this case Trump, who banned bump stocks in 2018 by regulation through the ATF as he worried about the political fallout after the Las Vegas shooting—or Congress can ban bump stops, deciding it must be Congress.

But the court only made that decision after determining that bump stocks don’t turn a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun, even though they make the gun do what a machine gun does: potentially kill hundreds of people in a few minutes.

The reckless decision, coming at a time when people are being arrested for attempting or threatening armed political violence and mass murder, is unconscionable. There is no question the court is giving Trump’s MAGA warriors more lethal weapons as he telegraphs to his supporters that they should engage in violence if he loses the election.

Note to readers: Between Father’s Day, Pride and the events surrounding it, and travel, June’s been a tough month to schedule our online Q&A for paid subscribers. And then we have the July 4th holiday weekend. So we’ll resume in July, after the holiday, likely on Sunday, the 14th. I will keep you posted.