Every so often, a Supreme Court oral argument is so divorced from reality that even a seasoned court-watcher like myself finds it jaw-dropping. The court’s consideration of whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was right to define guns equipped with bump stocks as machine guns was exactly that shocking.

The justices spent almost the entire time debating the technical workings of bump stocks and the meaning of the words “function” and “trigger” in the federal law that bans machine guns. No one, justice or lawyer, bothered to mention the real-world consequence of permitting bump stocks: They let mass shooters turn their semiautomatic assault rifles into effectively automatic weapons that fire up to 800 rounds a minute.

The whole sorry spectacle reminded me of the long-running debate about whether to allow television cameras into the Supreme Court to cover oral argument. Court insiders have long commented wryly that, if the cameras were allowed, the public would soon discover just how technical, dry and boring oral arguments really are.

But if the public had bothered to tune in to watch the bump stock argument, they might have done more than change the channel. They might have stormed the court in outrage that the justices seemed unable to address the real reason the ATF under then President Donald Trump redefined bump stocks as machine guns after the Las Vegas mass shooting in October 2017. In that horrific event, still — for now — the worst such carnage in U.S. history, the shooter killed 60 people and wounded 413. (More than 400 more were injured while desperately trying to get to safety.)

You might think the culprit in the Supreme Court’s failed oral argument is just lawyers being lawyers. After all, the technical legal issue before the court was not the Second Amendment and gun rights but rather a question of statutory meaning: do guns modified with bump stocks count as machine guns?

It is worse than that. As it turns out, there is a perfectly respectable theory of how to interpret statutes that would begin — and end — with the real-world question of the purpose of the law. Since the obvious purpose of the machine gun law is to protect the public against the dangerous effects of weapons that can fire bullets at incredible speed without having to pull the trigger every time a bullet fires, the clear and logical conclusion is that yes, guns with bump stocks are machine guns.

The trouble is that none of the justices was prepared to say that the way to get the right meaning of the statute is to ask its purpose. That’s because the justices, over the last couple of decades, have fallen into the thrall of a truly dysfunctional theory of statutory interpretation, one known as textualism.

Textualism, brainchild of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, sounds plausible on the surface. It asks what the words of the statute mean, which is always a good place to start any act of interpretation, legal or otherwise. What’s wrong with textualism is that it purports to ignore altogether the question of what the legislature’s purpose was in enacting the law. That question is, obviously, the most important second question to ask whenever interpreting any speech act by anyone.

You first ask what they meant.

Then you ask what they meant to achieve.

Taking those two together, you can understand what they were telling you.

Scalia hated the question of what the legislature intended or what its purpose was, supposedly because judges asking those questions would have the opportunity to inject their own views into the meaning of the statute. The trouble is that, if you ignore legislative intent and purpose, that gives the judges even more power to ignore the genuine meaning of the law. Instead of restricting judicial power, Scalia expanded it.

Over time, even some of the more liberal Supreme Court justices, like Elena Kagan, came to think of themselves as textualists. Astonishingly, Kagan referred to herself as a textualist during the bump stock oral argument — this despite the fact that she recently expressed her dismay at what textualism has become in the hands of the conservative majority.

Stephen Breyer, now retired, was the last justice to state openly that he believed in the central importance of legislative purpose. His former law clerk, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, ought to openly take up that mantle now. She did her best in the oral argument, focusing on the word “function” and claiming that the word should be understood broadly. But she didn’t seem to be convincing anyone else, mostly because she seemed to be focusing her argument on the meaning of the word “function” rather than on the function of the word in the context of the obvious legislative purpose.

The takeaway is that textualism is killing common-sense statutory interpretation. That’s bad when it comes to environmental laws and other regulations. It’s especially bad when the subject of the statute is supposed to stop the killing of actual people.

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery and the Refounding of America.”

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MOBILE, Ala. — Kerry Joseph doesn’t have any thoughts yet on the Chicago Bears’ biggest offseason decision, the one that holds the key to the NFL draft.

The team’s new quarterbacks coach, hired Friday, doesn’t even know where his office is at Halas Hall. He has been on a whirlwind tour since the season ended, free to seek a new job after the Seattle Seahawks forced out coach Pete Carroll.

Joseph, the assistant quarterbacks coach for the Seahawks the last two seasons, spent one day in Lake Forest interviewing for the Bears job. In between, he was scrambling to get to Mobile, where he’s serving as quarterbacks coach of the American team in the Senior Bowl.

Somehow along the way, Joseph got hooked up with Bears gear and was wearing a team-issued navy hat, navy shorts and gray sweatshirt at practice Tuesday at Hancock Whitney Stadium on the South Alabama campus.

He doesn’t have preliminary thoughts on Justin Fields. Joseph was the assistant wide receivers coach in Seattle in 2021, when the Bears drafted Fields. He has yet to dig in on this year’s draft, in which the Bears hold the first and ninth picks and are in position to select a new quarterback.

“I was getting transitioned to coming out here,” the 50-year-old Joseph said.

It’s the first time he has been an NFL position coach — above the assistant position coach level. The connection is easy to make. He worked with new Bears offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, who came from the Seahawks. The Bears also interviewed Seahawks quarterbacks coach Greg Olson for the offensive coordinator job.

The last first-time quarterbacks coach the Bears hired was Shane Day in 2010 based on his experience working with then-offensive coordinator Mike Martz in San Francisco. Since Day, the Bears have rolled through Jeremy Bates, Matt Cavanaugh, Dowell Loggains, Dave Ragone, John DeFilippo and most recently Andrew Janocko.

It would be overly dramatic to say this is the most important offseason for a Bears quarterbacks coach. There has been urgency to get the position right for the longest time. It just so happens they own the No. 1 draft pick as they prepare to thoroughly examine a talented group of passers, including USC’s Caleb Williams, North Carolina’s Drake Maye (who was a spectator at practice Tuesday), LSU’s Jayden Daniels and Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy.

Joseph, who was responsible for red-zone preparation with the Seahawks, had a hand in helping revive Geno Smith’s career in Seattle as Smith threw for 4,282 yards and 30 touchdowns in 2022. Joseph’s knowledge of Waldron’s system will be critical whether the Bears draft a quarterback or not.

“When you think about Shane and what we were able to do with the (Seahawks) offense, I think quarterback play is about having confidence,” Joseph said. “Quarterback play is just about being competitive. It’s about being smart, being dependable, having a good IQ of the game, being passionate.

“When you think about traits, when you talk about quarterback play and when you talk about Shane’s mentality, it’s just about being connected to the play caller, being connected to the offense. There are some things you’ve got to have and you’ve got to bring to it.”

Joseph was a quarterback at McNeese State and had a 42-11 record as a four-year starter, helping the Cowboys to two Southland Conference titles. He spent time with the Cincinnati Bengals in 1996 as an undrafted free agent before playing in NFL Europe. He tried to make the Washington Redskins as a slot back and then played safety for the Seahawks from 1998 to 2001, appearing in 56 games with 14 starts.

He returned to quarterback in the Canadian Football League in 2003, winning a Grey Cup with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2007, when he was named the league’s most outstanding player. After retiring following the 2014 season, he got into coaching at the college level with stops at his alma mater and Southeastern Louisiana before joining the Seahawks as an offensive assistant in 2020.

The diverse background — having played defense in the NFL — gives him a different perspective to teach offensive football.

“It helps me tremendously,” Joseph said, “because playing the safety position, playing that dime (position), playing down in the box helped me understand how defenses attack the offense, how guys fit. So now that I’ve gone back to quarterback, I see it from a defensive mentality.

“Being able to help guys to understand the game, not just from the offensive side but from the defensive side, kind of helped (with) where to put their eyes. That’s what it did for me as a player, and I try to teach it that way with a defensive mentality.”

Joseph will learn where his office is soon, and then he can hit the ground running as the Bears prepare for the draft and install a new offense — quite possibly with a new quarterback. As far as his philosophy on developing a young quarterback, he leaned into some basic tenets.

“I use three things: accountability, responsibility, communication,” Joseph said. “It’s about trust, believing and having confidence in each other. A quarterbacks coach and a quarterback, you’ve got to have those three things.

“Then, hey, it’s about the fundamentals. It’s about developing the fundamentals, developing the mentality to be a good leader. To be a winner. Just willing to compete. There are so many things that I have in my philosophy as a person that I take into the coaching world and into the quarterback room to help develop a group of guys.”

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