Tag: 2017 Las Vegas shooting

The Story: The US Supreme Court, on April 5, rejected an effort by a pro-gun group to delay the enforcement of a federal ban on...

"I knew for a fact it was a bump stock as soon as I heard the video," says Jeff LaCroix. A bump stock is a simple device that attaches to semiautomatic rifles, which normally shoot one round per trigger-pull, to speed up the firing rate by harnessing the gun's recoil to "bump" the trigger faster than the shooter would be able to with his or her finger. Ten states have passed bans or restrictions on the devices since the Las Vegas shooting. After Las Vegas, there were calls for legislation that would clearly ban the devices, but that idea didn't go far in the Republican-controlled Congress. During that review, the ATF received nearly 36,000 comments from the public, many from people who'd never heard of bump stocks before Las Vegas. She's unmoved by the argument that bump stocks are mostly used for fun — just to experience the thrill of firing something that's close to a machine gun. "Our question is whether or not this is an effort to go the back door and ban semiautomatics by regulation," Hammond says. And if that's all it takes, Hammond says defining bump stocks as illegal machine guns could mean that a future administration would interpret that to classify as a machine gun any semiautomatic with the potential of being bump-fired. Scare, you know, well-meaning, law-abiding gun owners into thinking there's going to be some dire consequence," says William Rosen, director of state policy and government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety. Las Vegas aside, they're rarely, if ever, used in crimes.