Time for Congress to Ban Bump Stocks?

What’s the story?

• On Monday – the one-year anniversary of the tragic Las Vegas shooting – President Donald Trump announced that the bump stocks the shooter used to carry out his attack were “gone.”

“Bump stocks are gone. I have told the NRA — bump stocks are gone. But to do that, you have to go to public hearings, which we have had. You have to go through all sorts of regulatory control systems.”

• Or Congress could have passed bipartisan legislation making bump stocks illegal, which would have made the ban immediate, permanent, and not subject to future regulatory changes.

Remind me—what are bump stocks?

• A mechanism that allows semi-automatic weapons to mimic the firing speed of automatic weapons.
• Twelve of the rifles the Las Vegas mass shooter had in his hotel room were modified with a “bump stock.”
• The “stock” is the part of the rifle that’s held against the shoulder. Replacing the traditional stock with a bump stock allows a semi-automatic weapon to behave like an automatic weapon: when the shooter pulls the trigger, the bump stock uses the recoil to “bump” the trigger back into the trigger finger, letting the shooter fire in rapid succession.

What regulation was the president referring to?

• In March, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department was proposing a rule to effectively ban bump stocks.
• The DOJ recently sent the proposed rule change to the Office of Management and Budget. After a review that could last up to 90 days, the proposal will be published in the Federal Register, inviting public comment.

What do you think?

Should Congress revisit the banning bump stocks? Or should the ban pass through these regulatory hurdles? Should there even be a ban on bump stocks? Take action above, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: iStockphoto.com / singha103)