An interesting one from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

The Modern Sportsman, LLC v. United States, No. 19-449 (June 5, 2026), is the latest in a string of decisions on the “bump stock” issue. You remember the issue: a “bump stock” is a device you can attach to a semi-automatic rifle to make it fire rapidly like a fully-automatic rifle. It gets its name from the “bump fire” technique whereby a shooter, with a little bit of practice, can operate a semi-auto rifle in a way that fires quickly even without any device. These devices were not defined as illegal machine guns under federal regulations. But then after an incident where a gunman used a rifle fitted with a bump stock to shoot up a concert, the government amended its regulations to make them illegal, and ordered owners to destroy them or turn them over to the government.

This issue has resulted in decisions like this from the Federal Circuit (no taking because no property interest), as well as this one from the CFC (complaint pleaded a taking), and this one from a U.S. District Court that a state ban on bump stocks isn’t a taking.

The Modern Sportsman case is the latest. There, the owners alleged this resulted in a physical taking of 85,000 bump stocks, and was an illegal exaction of either the bump stocks themselves, or the money it cost to destroy the bump stocks. The feds moved to dismiss claiming that a rule “mandating the destruction or surrender of personal property does not physically invade or appropriate that property.” Slip op. at 6. The CFC made short work of that argument, mostly because it had already decided in an earlier phase of the case that the physical takings claim was good.

But the CFC had a different view of the exaction claim, which is a “due process claim ‘for the recovery of monies that the government has required to be paid contrary to law.'” Id. The court concluded that the claim the government exacted the bump stocks themselves could not be prosecuted because the “owners did not pay the market value of the bump stocks to the government ‘directly or in effect.'” Slip op. at 7.

Turning to the claim that the cost to destroy the bump stocks was an exaction because the complaint adequately alleged that government regulation “gives bump-stock owners the option to either surrender or destroy their devices[.]” Slip op. at 8. As the CFC noted:

Since every dollar spent by Slide Fire to destroy the bump stocks was saved by the government, Slide Fire has adequately alleged that it paid money “in effect” and may recover directly under the Constitution.

Id.

Finally, the CFC held that the complaint stated a claim for a taking of the owner’s intellectual property rights. The court’s discussion of the status of intellectual property rights as “private property” protected by the Fifth Amendment on pages 8-10, which concludes that “[c]onsidering the overwhelming case law on this point, the Court concludes that patents are protect property rights[,]” is very worth reading. Slip op. at 10.

Here’s the court’s reasoning:

Slide Fire has sufficiently pleaded a categorical taking. The ATF was aware that the regulation would have extraordinary consequences to Slide Fire. See 83 Fed. Reg. 66514, 66526 (acknowledging the Rule caused Slide Fire to close its business but arguing its narrow application was not punitive or a bill of attainder). See also Lucas, 505 U.S. at 1030–32 (a regulation designed to remove all productive uses of property requires compensation). Cf. Tahoe-Sierra, 535 U.S. at 322–23 (partial intrusions into business would require a fact-based analysis different from categorical takings). The ATF did not pause Slide Fire’s patent rights to undertake “informed decisionmaking” when it published the Final Rule. The purpose of the Rule was to ban the products and abrogate the patent rights. The regulatory taking was not temporary; it was permanent and complete from the time it was enacted until the Supreme Court struck it down.

Defendant’s argument that Slide Fire failed to plead an ad hoc taking fails for much the same reason as its per se argument. A court determines an ad hoc regulatory taking through the Penn Central analysis. See Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York, 438 U.S. 104, 124 (1978). Under this analysis, courts must look at (1) the “economic impact of the regulation on the claimant,” (2) the “extent to which the regulation has interfered with distinct investment-backed expectations,” and (3) “the character of the governmental action.” Id.

Slip op. at 13.

Worth your time to review this one.