A federal court this week ordered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to return a bump stock to a Utah man who had challenged the federal government’s rule banning the firearm devices.

The order comes after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the bureau unlawfully tried to ban bump stocks by classifying them as machine guns under an earlier gun control law.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Utah issued its order Tuesday in favor of Clark Aposhian in his legal battle.

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“Defendants shall return to Plaintiff the bump stock they confiscated from him in March 2019,” the order reads.

Mark Chenoweth, president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, said only Congress can write criminal laws — not executive agencies. His group represented Mr. Aposhian in his lawsuit as well as Michael Cargill, who successfully took his fight over bump stocks all the way to the Supreme Court.

It is because of Mr. Cargill’s victory that the Utah court ordered ATF to hand over the bump stock to Mr. Aposhian.

“Bureaucrats at the ATF and other federal agencies are not empowered to write or reinterpret rules that take away more freedom. That’s why this is a glorious victory for all liberty-loving people,” Mr. Chenoweth said.

In June, the high court split 6-3 along ideological lines over the bump stock rule.

Justice Clarence Thomas said in the opinion there are important differences between an actual machine gun and bump stocks, which are attachments added to semiautomatic rifles to make them fire continuously in the same way as automatic rifles.

And he said the way Congress has written the law doesn’t qualify bump stocks as machine guns. An automatic weapon, or machine gun, is one that fires continuously as long as the trigger is pulled.

Machine guns are heavily regulated, both in terms of supply and who is permitted to own one.

A bump stock attaches to the rear of a rifle and helps it slide quickly back and forth. The resulting motion helps repeatedly engage the trigger fast enough that it can simulate automatic fire.

ATF had repeatedly declined to define bump stocks as machine guns, but that changed after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, in which a gunman using bump stocks fired at a concert from a hotel, killing 58 people and wounding more than 500 others.

The government had pointed to the National Firearms Act of 1934, which regulates machine guns, as a way to prohibit bump stocks.

The case that was argued before the justices was brought by Mr. Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works, who challenged the ATF’s 2018 rule reversal.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, reasoning that the government’s use of a decades-old ban on machine guns and applying that to bump stocks was ambiguous.

The Supreme Court’s decision affirmed that ruling.

Mr. Cargill, though, said he is still waiting to get his bump stocks back as the lower court in Texas has not issued its order yet. However, federal authorities have confirmed he will be able to pick them up.

“The ATF did give us a call and said I can go and pick up my bump stocks, but we are waiting on the judge’s order,” Mr. Cargill told The Washington Times.