GOP Lawmakers Joining Democrats to Ban Bump Stocks
“There’s no reason for a typical gun owner to own anything that converts a semi-automatic to something that behaves like an automatic.”
A few GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate have announced they are open to legislation that will ban bump stocks, a device allegedly used by Stephen Paddock in the Las Vegas massacre.
This device “is a sliding stock that when pressed against a shooter’s shoulder allows a semi-automatic gun to shift backward and forward with the recoil of each shot fired.” Authorities found bump stocks in Paddock’s room, but we do not know for sure if he used them during the massacre.
Bump Stocks Legalized Under Obama
Obama’s ATF approved the bump stock in 2010. From LawNewz:
The company Slide Fire patented a shoulder version of the bump stock and sent the device to Obama’s ATF for regulatory evaluation in early 2010. The ATF approved Slide Fire’s device in June of that year. In a letter explaining their decision, the ATF wrote:
The stock has no automatically functioning mechanical parts or springs and performs no automatic mechanical function when installed. In order to use the device, the shooter must apply constant forward pressure with the non-shooting hands and constant rearward pressure with the shooting hand. Accordingly, we find that the ‘bump stock’ is a firearm part and is not regulated as a firearm under the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act.
Rick Vasquez signed off on the decision. He told The Washington Post that the ATF “followed the law, and everything was evaluated fairly and honestly with the regulations.”
The House
But Congress doesn’t want to give off the impression they’re not doing anything so Democrats have spoken out against bump stocks and at least one GOP lawmaker agrees with them. From The Hill:
Rep. Bill Flores (Texas), a former Republican Study Committee chairman, was the first Republican in Congress to publicly endorse a ban on bump stocks.
“I think they should be banned. There’s no reason for a typical gun owner to own anything that converts a semi-automatic to something that behaves like an automatic,” Flores, a gun owner, told The Hill in an interview just off the House floor.
“Based on the videos I heard and saw, and now that I’ve studied up on what a bump stock is — I didn’t know there was such a thing — there’s no reason for it,” he said.
“I have no problem from banning myself from owning it.”
Unsurprisingly, a lot of these lawmakers have not heard of stock bumps until this massacre. This includes House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who said during an appearance on MSNBC that these devices are “something we need to look into.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte (R-VA) agreed with Ryan that lawmakers need “to look into” bump stocks.
Moderate Republicans like Charlie Dent (PA), Leonard Lance (NJ), Ryan Costello (PA), and Pete King (NY) have joined Flores with the banning language. The Hill continued:
“I’m ready to say that they should not be in public use. I think they are a problem. I support a ban on bump stocks. I don’t see any purpose for them,” Dent told The Hill.
“The law is clear to me that automatic weapons are banned in this country, as they should be,” he added.
Costello said, “Purchasing bump stocks off the shelf, enabling a semi-automatic firearm to replicate an automatic one, is a loophole that needs to be closed.”
Lance, who represents a district that Hillary Clinton won last year, stated, “Bump stocks should be banned. Fully-automatic weapons are already illegal in this country so any mechanism that essentially converts semi-automatic firearms into fully automatic weapons should also be illegal.”
Look at this from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in The Washington Post:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged Ryan to allow a vote on a Democratic bill to ban the devices. When asked whether the bill might be a slippery slope toward other gun restrictions, Pelosi said, “So what? . . . I certainly hope so.”
The Senate
Gun control enthusiast Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has already to plan legislation to ban the device and showed it to her Democrat colleagues on Tuesday. They unveiled it on Wednesday. From Politico:
“Bump stocks — which cost less than $200 — increase a semi-automatic rifle’s rate of fire from between 45 to 60 rounds per minute to between 400 to 800 rounds per minute. That’s the same rate of fire as automatic weapons,” Feinstein, a longtime gun-control advocate, told reporters. “The only reason to modify a gun is to kill as many people as possible in as short as time as possible.”
No GOP senators have specifically said they will ban the bump stocks, but said they would like to explore the option. From The New York Times:
“I own a lot of guns, and as a hunter and sportsman, I think that’s our right as Americans, but I don’t understand the use of this bump stock,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said, adding, “It seems like it’s an obvious area we ought to explore and see if it’s something Congress needs to act on.”
Mr. Cornyn said the continuing legality of the conversion kits was “a legitimate question,” and told reporters he had asked Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Judiciary Committee chairman, to convene a hearing on that issue and any others that arise out of the Las Vegas investigation.
Other Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida, said they would be open to considering legislation on bump stocks.
“We certainly want to learn more details on what occurred in Las Vegas,” Mr. Rubio said, “and if there are vulnerabilities in federal law that we should be addressing to prevent such attacks in the future, we would always be open to that.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), chairman for the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said that if research shows Congress that bump stocks indeed make a rifle more like an automatic weapon then he would vote to ban them.
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Comments
Bump stocks were approved by the ATF in 2010, during the Obama administration:
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/bump-stock-device-received-atf-green-light-during-obama-administration
Interesting collection of comments on that page.
Just another example of those ee-ville Republicans out to destroy Obama’s legacy…
Charlie Dent (PA), “The law is clear to me that automatic weapons are banned in this country,..”
Leonard Lance (NJ), “Fully-automatic weapons are already illegal in this country…”
Both wrong. In truth, fully-automatic weapons can be purchased by private citizens but they’re too expensive for most not to mention the bureaucratic burden associated with acquiring and owning them. You have to be a dedicated collector in order to pursue them.
But “the law is clear” to Charlie. No wonder we should be nervous every time these masterminds begin tinkering with our liberties.
“Give me Bump Fire stocks or give me death”?
There will be a lot of chicken Republicans who will be only to keen to get on the band wagon. Time to get them out if congress and replaced by legislators with backbones.
This is a huge mistake by the cowardly GOP. The NRA appears to have put its imprimatur on proceeding.
Next will be all semi-autos, magazines, and on down the (over-used term) slippery slope.
I am disgusted as usual. NEVER give the bastards an inch. They never give an inch on abortion. The ‘rats didn’t cave when that ghetto baby butcher was convicted of horrific crimes. The ‘rats didn’t cave when the evil Planned Parenthood videos came out. What do the ‘rats do? Circle the wagons and sue. What does the dim-witted GOP do? Cave like there’s no tomorrow.
Primary every SOB who supports this.
Well, there is the media/socialist position of “SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!” and NRA is a master at reading the tea leaves of which way the DC wind is blowing. Cox and La Pierre both came out for nationwide concealed carry on FOXNEWS last night. IF we “have” to have a sacrifice, I could trade putting bump-stocks in the AOW catagory in exchange for nationwide concealed carry. That way there is no “ban” and ATF has ruled various leather holsters, briefcases and belt buckles(!) as “Any other weapon” and mere possession without the “background check” is a 10 year FELONY. If you still want one, you can get it with a $5 tax, background check and a 9 month wait. Bcuz the socialists think “background checks” are the holy grail. Of course the Vegas shooter PASSED 33 “background checks” in the past year every time he bought a new rifle.
Yeah, so the OBAMA ATF had no problem with them… and now, OMG we must ban all the things! Idiot RINOs.
Hasty political positions when investigation under way. It certainly telegraphs one’s weaknesses. The Left creates the breeze the Repubs stick their finger in the air to see which way things are blowing. Why not bargain… bump stocks for suppressor or reciprocity? It is like Carter cancelling B-1’s publicly BEFORE negotiations with the Soviets. Surrender monkeys…
The NRA is making it easy for the cowardly GOP to support this. After decades of membership, my husband and I bailed on the NRA when they threw their support behind Trump.
We were considering rejoining. Uh-uh. No way, Jose.
It’s a slim hope that this is a strategic move by the NRA and they aren’t REALLY going to maintain support for this after some necessary lip service for appearances/popularity sake while the country is in an “emotional” state about the unprecedented attack.
They did include a proposal to trade that for National Reciprocity. I could almost go for that trade, since “bump stocks” are easy to make at home and frankly aren’t that useful for serious shooting.
Well isn’t that just peachy. We can no longer say that Congressional Republicans have gotten nothing done. They’ve joined with Democrats to pass more gun control. How wonderful.
Anything to keep from addressing the real problem – the hateful rhetoric which engulfs us now. It’s inescapable. Everywhere I go, everything I listen to, every TV show or movie I watch (the newer ones anyway), it’s hate, hate, hate, violence, violence, violence.
45 to 60 rounds per minute in semi-auto? Any reasonably competent shooter can do 120-150 rounds per minute, including mag changes, and with a lot more accuracy. The truth is it’s a blessing that the shooter used bump stocks or there would be far more dead.
i’ve never understood why people would want to own a bump-stock, other than to burn through ammo faster, as they reduce accuracy, but that’s their business.
there’s no reason to make them illegal all of a sudden.
better we pass a law making it illegal to murder people, which is obviously the real solution needed here.
I’ve not fired one- but my understanding is that a lot of military teams abandoned the auto version of the M4 for that reason- you burn your mag in 3 seconds with no accuracy. Even if your aim was sort of good, the recoil sends you way off target by the end of the spray.
WRT to bump style—- geeze you don’t have to be much of an engineer to figure out how to tickle the trigger in rapid succession. It doesn’t mean you’ll hit a damn thing, except if you were looking to take out the queue to the airport metal detector which in my view is a hideously soft target for terrorists. But even at that- w/out several hundred rounds it is like optimizing software….time at the CPU vs time hard drive.
i’ve fired full auto: M-2HB, M-60 & M-16A1.
with a tripod, T&E, Ma Deuce is incredible accurate. W/O the T&E or from the pintle mount, it’s an area weapon, and the farther away the target, the bigger an area you’re dispersing rounds into.
M-60 from bipod or tripod, very accurate, assuming your barrel is in good shape. you can, with a bit of practice, fire it one round at a time, and get remarkably small 20 round groups (~3 or 4″) at even 600 meters.
off hand, like in the movies, you’re a safety hazard.
M-16: from the bipod, in bursts, reasonably accurate on a small area target. off hand? might as well address all the bullets after the first one “To Whom It May Concern”, unless you are firing point blank at a mass target, like a room you’re trying to clear.
just my personal experience whilst in uniform, back in the day.
redc1c4 those would be the same results I had with those weapons. Of course when I was in the service our service weapons were the M16 A2. No full auto version just the 3 round burst. The reasoning given was that full auto just wasted a bunch of ammo because you were off target after the first 3 shots.
Actually, there’s the “3 round burst” setting, which is intended as a compromise and works reasonably well IF you’ve trained to shoot that way.
I think they are dangerous and they can also ruin perfectly good guns if that gun was never originally designed to fire at a high rate and isn’t a back-convert to a semi from a fully automatic that was built to be as such.
That said, I do agree with you to an extent…we live in a society though that seeks to protect people from themselves in a nanny state way. Take seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws for example.
Yes, if a firearm isn’t designed to handle high rates of fire then a conversion like the bump fire does carry the risk of causing damage to the firearm. For emphasis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cr9e3N6HEw
Yes it was deliberate in that video and done with one capable of full auto fire but the point still stands. Firing lots of rounds as fast as you can heat up the gun real quick and potentially ruin it. If you want to view more such videos just search on youtube: iraqveteran8888 meltdown.
And I’ve realized I made a mistake. He very likely is using a bump stock in these videos, because otherwise, that’s a lot of money he’s burning in these videos! Well, he still is burning a fair bit but not nearly as much as he would if those were actually full auto versions.
They are probably selling like hotcakes now.
Stupid pols, prohibition doesn’t work. When will they learn?
3D-Printed Bump Stock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-fPMjJPxSc
You can make your own at home with ease.
I was thinking the other day that I could…with very little tinkering…make a motor-driven trigger cam thingy that would BOTH allow for a very high cyclic rate AND much more accuracy than a cranked one. Simple fractional HP motor and a switch, and one cam, with mounting hardware. It would offer a lot more control, too.
There are always ways to wire around the law.
yeah I saw that episode of Breaking Bad too.
Was there one? I’d love to see it! Do you have a YouTube link?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73xMOzVYU9o
The movie clip is of an M-60 Light Machinegun ,,, no fancy conversion.
Ya, the sound of the ammo links ejecting was kinda a clue…
I’m thinking you add a web cam, remote control and mount it on an autonomous vehicle and you could have all kinds of fun hunting wild hogs.
This would be fun too.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=burning+up+an+ar15&qs=PF&cvid=88adfc9fe98b486687
I’ve seen a hand-cranked version. It works with a 10/22, and it probably wouldn’t be that hard to make it work with a Ruger Mini-14 or Mini-30.
https://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/10-22-crank-operated-gatling-gun-kit-2-tone?a=1104846
“There’s no reason for a typical gun owner to own anything that converts a semi-automatic to something that behaves like an automatic,”
Here’s my reason:” foreign AND domestic”
/eyeroll
A bump stock is just a spring and plastic. I could make one with hardware store supplies in less than an hour.
This is just feel-good bullshit so they can claim they did something.
If you actually have some training you don’t even need a special device to “bump fire” weapons, that is the truly hilarious part about this current “blame the inanimate object and not the evil psycho” screed.
If the only reason for full auto weapons is to enable mass killing:
Why do most police depts have them in quantity? Who do they envision shooting in large quantities?
Millions of rounds have been fired by owners of bump stock equipped rifles. Why is this the first mass killing using a bump stock? Are their guns defective?
Mark Levine noted yesterday … how many shootings at gun shows?
I think it was Clint Smith (Thunder Ranch) that said machine guns were efficient at turning money into noise. Tactics beat volume.
When Rhodesia was embargoed …they were reduced to conserving ammo and rarely went full auto… and prevailed against Zipra and Zanla who were full auto with AKs. The line must be held at semi-auto. The Left says the 2A is ancient.. but forget to mention the Founders didn’t get a chance to read 1984 nor see an all encompassing surveillance state.
Oh that “2A is ancient” argument is powerfully retarded. So is 1A… are we limiting free speech to a hand-cranked printing press? My God that is so effing stupid.
They tried registering and banning printing presses in early 1800s. So even back then bans were tried.
Any real Rifleman will tell you that spray and pray is not an effective or efficient use of ammo. In fact having been through military training I can tell you that even in the military when they teach you to use full auto’s they actually teach you to burst fire and not just hold down a trigger.
We should be glad that this guy didn’t behave like a rifleman, because there would be a hell of a lot more dead and and less wounded.
I was a beat cop and our long guns were semi-auto. AR15s. I’ve never heard of a police department having full auto weapons.
Plenty of California departments got M-4s … a removable tab interposed between handgrip and lower receiver blocks rock and roll. Take off tab and bingo! Also many departments had them from years back. Most ARs are “patrol rifles” when described to “civilians”.
The M4s were part of the military to civilian law enforcement programs. Part of that sprang from the Hollywood shootout. To appease the softies the lockout tab was created (can’t have cops with full auto you know). It was still a fully capable and licensed Class III arm.
Mine does
A tactical reason for full-auto fire (controlled) is suppression and clearing, not killing a lot of people.
Read “Red Platoon” by MOH recipient Clinton Romesha.
Yeah, but you still need a bipod or other firm rest; off hand the muzzle climb will make it an anti-aircraft weapon fairly quickly.
Am I the only one who was shocked when this invention was given the green light? I believe there are only two companies that make these, and they’re both in the same tiny Texas town maybe 2.5 hours from where I am.
If full-auto is supremely, heavily regulated (not illegal), then why on earth was this thing OK’d by the Obama administration? Draw your own conclusions.
Full-auto isn’t accurate, wastes ammo, why any gun owner would want a bump stock is beyond me. I don’t want one. I don’t know any gun owner who has one or wants one unless it was just to screw around with at the range. NRA doesn’t care, this is low-hanging fruit and will solve nothing.
Better question than what to do with bump stocks: what’s next?
Let’s clear something up.
BATF can only enforce the laws as written. Under existing law, it is illegal to modify the working parts of a semi-automatic weapon to allow it to fire multiple rounds on a single pull of the trigger or without releasing the trigger. Equipment, such as Sure Fire’s bump stock and a couple of other items, do not allow the weapon to continue to fire without the trigger being released, but act to physically cycle the trigger at a much faster rate than the human finger can do so. So, they are legal under existing law.
This is a loophole which has not been addressed. The reason that it has not been addressed is because the use of these devices has not be either widespread or problematic. As others have noted, one can achieve nearly the same rate of fire, with similar accuracy, firing the weapon in a traditional semi-automatic fashion. Also, use of these devices significantly degrades the accuracy of the weapon. And, finally, full automatic fire puts a lot of stress on a firearm. Mechanical parts fail. And, they have a tendency to fail more quickly if subjected to long periods of repetitive stress
Banning bump stocks may make some people feel better. But it will have little effect upon increasing safety.
I logged-in for the single purpose to up-click your astute, clear-headed comment.
I agree with your comment and have read the BATF’s regulations concerning automatic weapons. The simplest solution is to have the BATF change their definition of what constitutes modifying the mechanism of a semi-auto rifle. It could read that “Any device, whether part of the firing mechanism or not, that allows the semi-auto rifle to fire at an exaggerated rate of fire is prohibited”. Not being a lawyer I do not know the precise words to use but this would be the simplest way to get rid of the bump stock and any other device like the trigger cam crank. There are other homemade devices that can be found online that should also be included. I agree that the left will not stop if this sop is given to them. It will only whet their insatiable appetite for gun grabbing. As gun owners and 2nd amendment believers, we must do what we can to keep the focus on the right to bear arms and not the right to see how absurd we can make. If this is thrown to the BATF then it will take the politics out of it except that Trump will be able to say that he had to step forward and undo this terrible mistake that obama made!.
The definition of a, “automatic weapon or firearm” is set by law and the BATF has to use that definition. The Congress would have to change the law to prohibit specific accessories, as they did in the assault weapons bill of 1994, or generic accessories which mechanically or electronically move the trigger using recoil of the weapon or other mechanical actions. The problem here is that gun control advocates will attempt to go far beyond the language necessary to ban mechanical add-on accessories which increase the semi-automatic rate of fire. So, the legislation will either bog down and go nowhere [not necessarily a bad thing] or it will end up affecting unassociated characteristics of weapons and accessories [potentially a very bad thing]..
It was approved for the reasons that MAC45 lists and because it is a goofy novelty. It’s not like you actually need one to bump fire a weapon if you know your weapon and have reasonable timing we were trained to do it when I was going through training in the Army.
Also the myth that these things allow you to just rattle off magazines with abandon is just silly. Since they are a novelty very few people know how to use them to their max effect. Most of the time you get a few rounds out than have to reset and try again.
I just heard from the NPR station that the young lady statistician, Liah Libresco,
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/03/statistician-researching-gun-violence-no-longer-believe-gun-control/
who wrote the article about her change of heart about gun control, based on her statistical risk analysis. They were interviewing her, and asked her about the current legislation.
She pointed out that this law is unlikely to do anything positive, because it seizes on a novelty about this incident. She said that most gun violence is not very large numbers of people, and the risk for the Las Vegas shooter’s group (older white men) is suicide. She added that alienating them by passing a law like this is not going to help matters.
I was surprised she was treated with respect, and not cut off.
Ban away, morons. there are probably 5 ways to home engineer a device to do the same. Ever read the article “On the Escape of Tigers”, Am J Public Health Nations Health. 1970 Dec;60(12):2229-34. Haddon suggests 10 mitigations for hazards. So there are at least 9 other things Congress could do also. And at least ONE of them MIGHT have some effect. But this one is symbolism over substance.
The brilliance of our lawmakers is truly remarkable: they never heard of a “bump-stock” until 48 hours ago, and have already definitively concluded that there is no reason that anyone should need or have one! That’s a conclusion that one definitely can make up, without any knowledge or facts.
A semi-auto AR can be fired in short bursts by simple action of one’s index finger, and with brief pauses to acquire new targets can be more effective and lethal that a sustained full auto burst. In fact, the military has recognized that by equipping combat M4 rifles with sears that limit auto fire to 3 round bursts.
Politicians’ reflexes always surge toward passing another law — best, from their point of view, with their name on it.
Tri-burst was to increase lethality of the mouse gun as I remember it. In Viet Nam 100,000 rounds expended per kill.
3-round burst was to prevent hyped up soldiers from running their mags dry in the first few seconds and to try to instill fire discipline.
You’re both correct.
Initially, the 3 round burst capability was added to limit the tendency for troops to spray the entire magazine at a target. It has been retained to increase the stopping power of the 5.56x45mm round.
This, since the 5.56 is such a light round you have a much better chance of stopping a target if you hit with multiple rounds, it just to happens that with the rate an M-16 can fire you can basically get 3 rounds off with minimal change in the aim point and have a better chance at multiple hits to center mass. Some rifles and SMG’s only have 2 round burst because that is the most rounds you can fire without significant change in the aim point.
This attachment seems like a toy, a gimmick.
I expect obastard allowed this to pass so an event such as occurred would…occur.
Look at the result.
I doubt it being approved was ever even a blip on his radar. He had other problems to cause.
I’ve never used a bump stock but I’ve watch Hickok45 and Jerry Miculek demo them on Youtube. Very hard to aim accurately when burst firing. Weapons overheat quickly causing weapon to fail quickly.
Not all that faster a rate of fire than what you could do yourself on a standard AR.
I’m fine with a new law banning them as long as the Dems give up something in return, like national reciprocity for concealed carriers.
“I’m fine with a new law banning them as long as the Dems give up something in return, like national reciprocity for concealed carriers.”
And therein lies the problem with our current “conservative” leadership “Compromise” seems to mean, give the left what they want and fold like a cheap suit on anything the right wants.
There’s no reason for a typical gun owner to own anything that converts a semi-automatic to something that behaves like an automatic.
What is a typical gun owner? What about non-typical gun owners? Should we repeal the 2nd Amendment? Should we restrict firearms? Since full auto weapons are not generally available, what should we use to defend ourselves against the Antifa hordes?
There have been constraints on firearms for decades and those constraints have been continuously tightened. When bump stocks are banned and people find another way to simulate full auto fire, will we then say there is no reason for a typical gun owner to own a semiautomatic rifle?
I hear another click coming from the ratchet.
Let’s put this in perspective and gauge the liberal reaction to this exceptional crisis. Around one million wholly innocent human lives are, in America alone, aborted in Planned Parenthood and other progressive institutions every year. In exchange for implementing a measure under a mandate of color diversity (i.e. judging people as a class by the “color of their skin”, e.g. “gun owners”), the left and neo-Democratic Socialist Party will immediately terminate operation of abortion chambers, cannibalistic clinics, tear down the privacy walls, and affirm the unalienable right of babies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I have been aware of bump stocks since watching a video about 5 years ago could not see any use for then but now the intellectual cream of the country is about to look into it and probably ban it maybe I do need one hmmmm
The most irritating thing about this whole discussion was the conceited pomposity of these pathetic swamp creatures.
We need politician control.
By the way are they going to ban rubber bands also? At least atf dropped their shoestring machine gun letter. Yeah, they once said a shoestring was a machine gun.
Anyway, here’s a video of how to use a rubber band in place of a bump stock for those who want to have some fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVfwFP_RwTQ
Rep. Bill Flores (Texas), a former Republican Study Committee chairman, was the first Republican in Congress to publicly endorse a ban on bump stocks.
“I think they should be banned. There’s no reason for a typical gun owner to own anything that converts a semi-automatic to something that behaves like an automatic,” Flores, a gun owner, told The Hill in an interview just off the House floor.
He’s absolutely correct. There should be no need for an American to own such a thing. As member by law of the the state and federal militia, I should be able to buy the same fully automatic weapon issued to a standard Mark 1 Mod 0 infantry soldier so that if I’m called into service, I can come fully equipped- AS REQUIRED BY LAW.
How are they defining bump stocks? The definition has to be precise or we may end up banning all semi-autos through definition creep.
That’s the idea.
I’ve fired a rifle with a bump stock once. I thought it was incredibly stupid and a waste of ammunition. My concern with a bump stock ban is how the legislation would be worded. You don’t need a special device to bump fire a semi automatic rife. So what’s Congress going to do? Require a trigger pull so heavy it’s not feasible to bump fire a rifle? Are they going to make things like binary triggers illegal as well?
As someone mentioned upstream, it’s actually a blessing that he used a bump stock. Had he aimed, the casualty rate would have been a hell of a lot higher.
But they are wanting to ban something that we don’t know if the guy even used or not.
Just as well ban go pro cams since he had them too
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=burning+up+an+ar15&&view=detail&mid=B552A91F50C58C07B799B552A91F50C58C07B799&rvsmid=EE5C6652097E082823E7EE5C6652097E082823E7&FORM=VDQVAP
Good, hard torture test of a AR-type at a high cyclical rate.
Note the time frame.
Red hot barrel that failed. The human wave attacks during the Korean War… M1 Garands and Carbines handguards catching on fire and barrels burned out.
Thanks for finding that ….
The availability of internet media, the use of cell phone video and speed of communications has put such events in better context.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Cheapest+AR-15&&view=detail&mid=3C001D6BE6C5D5EAFFC63C001D6BE6C5D5EAFFC6&rvsmid=D94B128C3188B9FFF9E1D94B128C3188B9FFF9E1&FORM=VDQVAP
This is another really good one. Note that you CAN buy really fine barrels for these things. Better than the military issues.
Cyclic rate of fire is not the same as sustained rate of fire. Only a belt-fed machine gun can indefinitely (within the ability of the barrel to take the punishment) maintain a high cyclic rate. Magazine-fed weapons require frequent magazine changes. Of course, those can be very quick, but so can the finger without a bump stocks. Bump stocks are a sort of fix looking for a problem. Magazine-fed firearms, because they are not belt-fed, cannot withstand a high rate of fire for long before failing in one mode or another. (With direct-impingement ARs, the failure point is usually the gas tube, not the barrel.)
” there is no legitimate reason for any gun owner to – ”
I do not recognize your authority to determine what is or is not legitimate for me.
Brilliant minds think alike… fools never disagree……
I offer a London analyst’s view……
https://www.steynonline.com/8162/theory-of-the-case
Good read at the very least and the Londoner may be correct, but who really knows the mind of a psychopath. You can’t apply logic to the thinking of a psychopath because being a psychopath means that they used a flawed train of thought, that may seem logical to them.
Absolutely right…. whether for “personal glory” or a cause… the amount of suffering is beyond the pale. Branagh in “Conspiracy” about the Wannsee meeting to solidify “The Final Solution” shows how cold and calculating the plans to murder millions can be discussed. Evil… pure evil… then and now. The simplest answer to “why” is because he wanted to.
Flores says, “I think they should be banned. There’s no reason for a typical gun owner to own anything that converts a semi-automatic to something that behaves like an automatic,”
So, he wants to ban springs, rubber bands, and shoe laces among many things that can cause a weapon to go into automatic mode according to BATF?
Even a condom can be used to do this, gonna ban rubbers too?
I might agree to giving up Bump Stocks for nationwide concealed carry and taking suppressors off the tax stamp list.
You did notice that I used a brand name for the stocks.