It's Thursday, February 29, 2024.

I'm Albert Molder and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

According to the mainstream media, what happened yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States

was that the nation's highest court heard oral arguments in a case about whether or not

the government can prohibit or make illegal bump stocks. Now if you're following

the case that is certainly what is being presented.

But here's where we need to understand.

There is a far larger question at stake in this Supreme Court case, and just about everybody

knows it, including all nine of the justices of the United States

Supreme Court.

So, how did we get here?

Well, in the narrowest sense, we got here because back in 2017 a mass shooting in the United States

it took place in Las Vegas and the shooter had used weapons that included the use of what were called bump stocks and that enabled the

shooter to shoot faster. There is an argument about how to define exactly what a

bump stock does but effectively it makes it more like an automatic weapon.

And of course in this case, with horrifying and deadly effect.

But almost immediately there was a public outcry for the government to do something to make such bump stocks illegal.

And thus, even back then, there was an immediate sense that the government was going to take some action.

The eventual action was taken not only because of a good deal of public conversation and political

pressure, but also because the Trump administration at the time it moved putting its own

emphasis behind the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, known in national nomenclature as ATF. The encouragement from the

administration was that the ATF should rule that it had the authority to

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