Trump orders bump stock restrictions
WASHINGTON — The deadly school shooting in Florida has moved President Donald Trump to call for a ban on devices that turn legal firearms into deadly automatic assault rifles. But some gun control supporters expressed skepticism: He has promised action before in response to a mass killing, only to drop it when Americans’ attention wanes.
Trump said on Tuesday that he had directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “very soon” propose regulations to get rid of the so-called bump stocks that “turn legal weapons into machine guns.” There has been no indication that the shooter in Parkland, Fla., used such a device in killing 17 people, but aides say Trump will look at a range of remedies in coming days.
Aides to the president also say he now favors efforts to improve the federal background check system, and discussed the merits with Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican leader who has introduced a bill to make changes. The fact that the Parkland suspect, a mentally troubled teen, could so easily buy his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle has renewed criticism of the background check system.
But Trump’s foray into policy talks is being met with skepticism based on his track record in office, his fluid stances on gun control and his close relationship with the National Rifle Association. He backed an assault weapons ban and a longer waiting period for gun purchases in 2000, writing about it in one of his books, and then reversed when he built a presidential campaign on an absolutist, pro-gun interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Trump’s idea now to ban bump stocks is not a new one. After the Las Vegas mass shooting in October, he signaled a willingness to discuss regulating or banning the kits that allow people — like the shooter in that case who fired down on a crowd from his hotel suite — to make their legal semi-automatic rifles operate like illegal, rapid-fire automatic weapons. The administration later clarified that any crackdown should be regulatory, not statutory — a stance shared with the NRA, which opposes any new gun control laws.
The result is that nothing happened, and the country moved on. Thus did the reaction to the Vegas massacre, the nation’s worst mass murder in modern times, follow a familiar pattern of years of gun control debates: Gun rights advocates stalled serious policy discussion after tragedy by saying it’s too soon to think of anything but the victims, yet as time passed so did the impetus for action.