Fresh push for gun

Weapon bump stocks could be the focus of bipartisan action in Washington Of all US adults:

It didn’t work after mass shootings at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, college campuses in Virginia and Oregon, a church in Charleston, South Carolina, or at a movie theater and high school in Colorado. Or after two lawmakers survived assassination attempts.

But after a gunman killed 59 people and wounded more than 500 at a Las Vegas concert, Democrats are going to try again to revamp US gun laws.

Stunned by the mass carnage caused at a country music festival by one heavily armed gunman and embittered after years of fruitless attempts at gun control, congressional Democrats yesterday unveiled new, narrowly tailored proposals and reintroduced old ideas to close loopholes and restrict how gun buyers undergoing background checks can purchase weapons.

Democrats believe that the sheer scope of the carnage and pressure on President Donald Trump to act might make this time different. At least some senior Republicans signalled an openness to at least discuss changes in gun control policy.

As Trump flew aboard Air Force One to Las Vegas to meet survivors of the shooting, Senator Dianne Feinstein unveiled a bill that bans bump fire stocks, devices that can be purchased online for US$200 and make semiautomatic weapons fire do not own guns more like automatic weapons. At least a dozen of the firearms recovered in Las Vegas were semiautomatic rifles legally modified using bump fire stocks to fire like automatic weapons.

Feinstein’s plan is copy-and-pasted own half the guns out of the 2013 bill to focus only on fire bump stocks and similar accessories. Hunting accessories would still be permitted. “Mr and Mrs America, help us. We know the power on the other side,” she said. “You have to help us.”