WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday issued a new rule banning bump stocks, the attachments that enable semiautomatic rifles to fire in sustained, rapid bursts and that a gunman used to massacre 58 people and wound hundreds of others at a Las Vegas concert in October 2017.
The new regulation, which had been expected, would ban the sale or possession of the devices under a new interpretation of existing law. Americans who own bump stocks would have 90 days to destroy their devices or to turn them in to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Justice Department said A.T.F. would post destruction instructions on its website.
Bump stocks work by harnessing a firearm’s recoil energy to slide it back and forth to bump against a squeezed trigger, so that it keeps firing without any need for the shooter to pull the trigger again. The Justice Department said that this function transforms semiautomatic weapons, like assault rifles styled on the AR-15, into fully automatic machine guns, which Congress sharply restricted in 1986 — allowing the ban.
“With limited exceptions, the Gun Control Act, as amended, makes it unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machine-gun unless it was lawfully possessed prior to the effective date of the statute,” the new regulation states. “The bump-stock-type devices covered by this final rule were not in existence prior to the effective date of the statute, and therefore will be prohibited when this rule becomes effective.”
A senior Justice Department official, briefing reporters about the new rule on condition of anonymity, said that it was believed that tens of thousands of bump-stock devices are in circulation, but that more exact figures are unavailable. The official said the department expected that most owners of the devices would comply with the new regulation, and that A.T.F. would investigate and take legal action against those who violate it.
After publishing a proposed version of the rule earlier this year, the government received 119,264 comments in support of it and 66,182 expressing opposition to it, the Justice Department said.
The regulatory move may face a legal challenge. The Justice Department had initially decided that the executive branch lacked the authority to ban bump stocks on its own under existing gun-control laws, and that action in Congress — where it is politically difficult to enact new gun-control legislation — would be necessary to curb legal access to the devices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/politics/trump-bump-stocks-ban.html
Bumpstocks are a somewhat popular firearms accessory that attaches to several popular guns in place of the normal stock and more or less uses the recoil of the firearm to allow you to fire quickly. They're impractical, silly, and mostly just for dumping a few magazines very quickly at milk jugs and soda bottles.
Supposedly, the vegas shooter had one in his possession when he COMP'd an entire country music festival. It has since come to light that while he may have, he also had more effective and already illegal machine gun conversions on hand anyway (a sort of ghetto lightning link sort of device, but I don't want to drift too far off topic). Bump stocks remained relatively obscure outside of a few calls for their banning.
Donald Trump, bizarrely, decided to make it a bit of a personal crusade to ban them, and has been at it for about a year or so now, generally agitating for it after the parkland shootings, which tragically missed david Hogg and also more bizarrely did not involve a bump stock which makes it even more of a head scratcher.
As of today, POTUS has finalized a rule, signed by his acting AG, that states bump stocks are now machine guns and anyone owning them has 90 days to turn them in or destroy them.
Mind, these are not $10 or $20 parts- they generally went for $200-400, and the expectation is that they be destroyed without compensation. And also, the determination that they are illegal comes after the Obama era ATF specifically determining that they were, in fact, legal, and that banning them would require legislative action and be beyond the purview of a regulatory agency.
As a result, multiple organizations have already filed for injunctions against the act, with more to follow. For an extra twist to an already bizarre legal game of twister, the NRA came out in favor of a bump stock ban after the vegas shooting.
Link to a press release from the Gun Owners of America, who largely pushed what became DC v Heller, aka the SCOTUS decision which enshrined the individualist second amendment (thanks, Scalia!).
(CORRECTION: that was the second amendment foundation, not GOA)
https://www.gunowners.org/goa-file-bump-stock-suit.htm
Direct link to the text of the ATF rule change banning bumpstocks within 90 days.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5635249/Bump-Stock-Final-Rule.pdf
For those concerned, binary triggers and "gatling" type devices are made mention of and specifically exempted... until next week, when the government decides they are also machine guns after going on record stating to the contrary.
Additionally, nobody knows how many bumpstocks there are, as several companies made them. I have seen estimates from 200-450k. You can't go to a gunshow without seeing dozens of them.
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