Powerful US gun lobby backs review of ‘fast firing’ device used by Vegas killer
THE ‘bump stock’ devices that the Las Vegas gunman used to turn semi-automatic rifles into fully automated weapons should be “subject to additional regulations”, the National Rifle Association has said.
The NRA said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives should immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law.
The organisation, which holds a powerful sway over members of Congress, dismissed some of the initial response from lawmakers who pressed for more gun control after Stephen Paddock shot dead 58 people attending a music festival.
The NRA said: “Banning guns
❝ Banning guns based on the criminal act of a madman will do nothing to prevent future attacks
from law-abiding Americans based on the criminal act of a madman will do nothing to prevent future attacks.”
The White House said President Donald Trump welcomed a review of US policy on so-called bump stock devices that legally make semi-automatic rifles into faster-firing automatic weapons.
Presidential spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters “we’re certainly open to having that conversation”.
Her remarks are part of a growing bipartisan chorus of calls to take a step in the direction of regulating guns in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre.
The killer in Las Vegas apparently used the legal bump stock devices on legal rifles, essentially converting them into automatic weapons, which are banned. An example of a bump stock device (top) that fits on a semi-automatic rifle to increase the firing speed, making it similar to a fully automatic rifle. Above, from left: Austin Davis, Laura Shipp, Rocio Guillen, Brian Fraser, Lisa Romero-Muniz, Cameron Robinson and Lisa Patterson, who all died in the attack
That allowed him to spray gunfire into the crowd below much more quickly.
The NRA announcement followed comments from leading congressional Republicans including House Speaker Paul
Ryan that Congress should take a look at the devices, which were little-known even to gun enthusiasts prior to Sunday’s bloodbath.
Mr Trump had reportedly discussed the issue with lawmakers on the way back from visiting
Las Vegas on Wednesday. Bump stocks were originally intended to help people with limited hand mobility fire a semi-automatic without the individual trigger pulls required.
They can fit over the rear
shoulder-stock assembly on a semi-automatic rifle and with applied pressure cause the weapon to fire continuously, increasing the rate from between 45 and 60 rounds per minute to between 400 and 800 rounds per minute. BRITISH author Kazuo Ishiguro has won the Nobel Prize in literature for his novels of “great emotional force”.
Ishiguro (62), is most famous for The Remains Of The Day and Never Let Me Go.
The writer was born in Japan but moved to the UK when he was five.
Judges of the prize, worth nine million Swedish kronor (around £842,000), said he had “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world” in novels of “great emotional force”.
The Remains Of The Day, his third novel, published in 1989, was turned into a film starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.