Federal authorities have merely announced that they are reviewing whether bump stocks should be prohibited.
The Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said this process will determine whether existing regulations outlawing the possession of machine guns can be applied to the accessory, which lets semi-automatic weapons fire more rapidly. This gets a pass from the NRA which came out against passing additional measures to limit firearms but endorsed using existing statutes to limit the use of the bump stocks accessory.
Here are five key facts about bump-stock devices as excerpted from an article on Breitbart News here.
ATF approved–Bump-stock devices do not change the action of the gun; they do not make the gun an automatic weapon. Rather, they allow the gun owner to mimic automatic fire in short bursts with variable consistency. This means the devices are categorized as an accessory rather than a conversion. Because of this, USA Today reports that they are ATF approved.
Other accessories will do the same thing–There are numerous ways a gun owner can make a semiautomatic rifle mimic automatic fire. There are special triggers, cranking devices, and other options, all of which are accessories rather than conversions.
“Bump-Stock” devices are for novelty, not accuracy–Bump-stock devices are not made for accuracy, but for the fun of mimicking automatic fire. Such devices tend to have a universal fit, which means an AR-15’s buffer tube can bobble back and fourth inside the bump-stock while the firearm is being shot. These are not made to be precision instruments but novelties that gun owners can enjoy while out shooting at the range.
Machine guns are legal–Contrary to much of the reporting issued after the Las Vegas attack, actual machine guns are legal in the U.S. Such firearms are extremely expensive–this is because legal machine guns are limited to those made before 1986–but they can certainly be purchased for legal use under federal law. It seems contrary to reality to ban devices that only mimic auto fire in a country where there are hundreds of thousands of privately-owned guns that really are automatic.
Typical leftist war on the poor–A ban on bump-stock devices takes away the $200 device poorer citizens can buy to at least pretend to be shooting the real machines they will never be able to afford.