Out of the box and after just a few minutes of assembly, a ‘bump stock’ can essentially transform a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun. It’s relatively cheap, pretty easy, and, until now, inexplicably legal. No gunsmith and no background check required.
Not only does the bump stock facilitate indiscriminate killing like a bomb or poison gas canister, the bump stock undermines the rule of law. And after a monster murdered 59 people and wounded more than 500 others in Las Vegas with bump stock-equipped rifles, the Washington Examiner‘s editorial board called on lawmakers to regulate the devices no differently than machine guns.
Five months later, President Trump now agrees.
“Just a few moments ago, I signed a memorandum directing the Attorney General to propose regulations to ban all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns,” Trump said on Tuesday shortly after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders discussed the Florida school shooting that left 17 dead. “I expect that these critical regulations will be finalized, Jeff, very soon.”
Regulating the bump stock has been particularly difficult. As the Trump White House was quick to point out after the Las Vegas shooting, it was the Obama administration that declared the devices legal. Because the accessory uses the shoulder of the shooter and the momentum of the recoil to increase the rate of fire, instead of internal mechanical parts, the ATF decided that the bump stock “is not regulated as a firearm under the Gun Control Act of the National Firearms Act.”
That was the point all along: to create a legal loophole allowing anyone to go full-auto. Until pulling the device from its stores, Cabela’s even advertised one bump stock for the AR-15 as capable of ensuring “a lifetime of rapid-firing fun.” But a device that facilitates the hobby of a responsible citizen brings tragedy in the hands of a madman.
It is entirely possible to be pro-Second Amendment and at the same time oppose the bump-stock. It is impossible to be conservative, however, and support keeping the device legal. It is an accessory designed to undermine the rule of law and it shouldn’t go unregulated. Trump is right to ban the bump stock.
