Scott Hardin v. ATF
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · No. 20-6380 · 65 F.4th 895
👍Favorable to gun rights
rejected the ATF's bump stock rule under the rule of lenity; a statutory, not Second Amendment, holding
GunMapUSA assessment of the outcome's direction, not a statement that the court decided rightly or wrongly.
What the court held
Scott Hardin, who owned several bump stocks, challenged the ATF's 2018 rule reclassifying bump stocks as machinegun parts as exceeding the agency's statutory authority. The Sixth Circuit reversed the district court, holding that the National Firearms Act's definition of "machinegun" is ambiguous as applied to bump stocks, that Chevron deference does not apply here, and that the rule of lenity therefore requires resolving the ambiguity in Hardin's favor. Judge Bush concurred in the judgment, reasoning that the best reading of the statutory text simply excludes bump stocks.
Summarized from the court's opinion.
Key Dates
- 2023-04-25 — Decided
Sources
- CourtListener — retrieved 2026-08-08
Summary of public court records. Not legal advice.