The Trump administration just banned bump stocks for guns
More than a year after the Las Vegas mass shooting, bump stocks are officially set to become illegal.
By German
[email protected]@vox.com Dec 18, 2018,
President Donald Trump’s administration has banned bump stocks, which effectively let semiautomatic weapons mimic machine guns.
The administration’s final regulation, likely to officially publish on Friday, will bring bump stocks into the broader federal ban on machine guns starting in late March 2019, forcing people who own bump stocks today to turn in or destroy the devices within 90 days. The administration originally introduced the rule in March 2018, but it needed to go through a formal regulatory approval process to take effect.
The bump stock ban originally came up in response to the Las Vegas shooting last year, in which a shooter used the devices to kill 58 people and injure hundreds more. The gunman still may have carried out the shooting without bump stocks, but the devices made the shooting much deadlier by turning his semiautomatic weapons into guns that closely simulated automatics.
Automatic weapons are what many Americans think of as machine guns. They can continuously fire off a stream of bullets if the user simply holds down the trigger, making them very deadly. Semiautomatic weapons, by contrast, fire a single bullet per trigger pull. The difference between an automatic and a semiautomatic effectively translates to firing hundreds of rounds a minute versus dozens or so in the same time frame.
Under federal law, fully automatic weapons are technically legal only if made before 1986, when Congress passed the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act. So it’s illegal to manufacture new automatic weapons for civilian use.
Bump stocks offer a way around the law, as the Associated Press explained shortly after the Las Vegas shooting:
The device basically replaces the gun’s shoulder rest, with a “support step” that covers the trigger opening. By holding the pistol grip with one hand and pushing forward on the barrel with the other, the shooter’s finger comes in contact with the trigger. The recoil causes the gun to buck back and forth, “bumping” the trigger.
Technically, that means the finger is pulling the trigger for each round fired, keeping the weapon a legal semi-automatic.
There are other modifications that achieve a similar effect, including a crank that replaces the trigger and turns a gun into what a gun aficionado channel on YouTube called “a mini Gatling Gun.”
Shortly after the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting in February, Trump called on the Justice Department to ban bump stocks and similar devices (although the Parkland shooting did not involve a bump stock). The Justice Department’s decision to do so came despite a reluctance that the Justice Department or Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have the legal authority ban bump stocks and similar devices.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/18/18146455/trump-bump-stock-ban-gun-violence
