Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
NRA makes concession on gun law
LAS VEGAS: The US gun lobby, which has seldom embraced new firearms- control measures, expressed a willingness to support a restriction on the rifle accessory that enabled a Las Vegas gunman to strafe a crowd with bursts of sustained gunfire as if from an automatic weapon.
The gunman Stephen Paddock, police said, fitted 12 of his weapons with “bump-stock devices” that allow semi-automatic rifles to operate as if they were fully automatic machine guns, which are outlawed in the US.
Authorities said his ability to fire hundreds of rounds per minute for 10 minutes from a 32nd-floor hotel suite was a major factor in the high casualty count of 58 people killed and hundreds wounded.
Paddock, 64, killed himself before police stormed his suite.
The carnage last Sunday night across the street from the Mandalay Bay hotel ranks as the bloodiest mass shooting in modern US history, surpassing the 49 people shot to death last year at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
The influential National Rifle Association (NRA), which staunchly opposed moves to tighten gun control laws after the Orlando massacre and others, said bump stocks, which remain legal, “should be subject to additional regulations”.
“Gun control is a failed policy. We’ve tried it and it is safe to say that it doesn’t keep people safe,” Chris Cox, executive director at the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said on Fox News.
“There needs to be an honest conversation about solutions that work and one of those solutions is to make sure the Second Amendment is supported and protected.”
Democrats were urging new legislation, as the shooting reignited the long-standing US debate over regulation of gun ownership, protected under the Second Amendment of the US constitution.
The NRA called for the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to address bump stocks by regulation, rather than opening up the issue to the legislative process. – Reuters