NEWS SAYS: YOU FAILED THEM
Coward pols won’t ban Vegas murder device
Politicians owe victims of Vegas horror (pictured) more than excuses.
THREE WEEKS after the deadliest mass shooting in modern history, efforts to ban the gadgets known as bump stocks — which the Las Vegas killer used to turn rifles into machine guns — have come to a screeching halt.
There’s little chance that any kind of gun control legislation will gain traction on Capitol Hill — even after the National Rifle Association appeared to give its stamp of approval to one measure.
Five days after Stephen Paddock’s Oct. 1 slaughter in Las Vegas — when he opened fire on a concert, killing 58 and wounding nearly 500 — the NRA said it was in favor of tighter regulations for bump stocks.
Investigators had found 12 rifles in Paddock’s 32nd-floor hotel room fitted with bump stocks, which modified his semiautomatic weapons to make them automatic ones.
Within days, lawmakers called for a review of whether bump stocks should remain legal — and to the surprise of many, the NRA joined in.
The gadgets “should be subject to additional regulations,” the gun-loving group said.
But the NRA also kicked responsibility for any proposed changes to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — even though that agency has no authority to restrict or ban bump stock sales.
“The NRA already knows that the ATF’s hands are tied. We’ve been down this road before and it’s a road we go down often,” said Adam Winkler, professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.”
“So when the NRA says that the ATF should look again at bump stocks, it’s a stall tactic — a way to say they are doing something when really it’s just another delay.”
The ATF wrote letters in 2010 and 2013 explaining how current laws — the Gun Control Act (1968) and National Firearms Act (1934) — do not provide an avenue for the bureau to regulate the gun attachments, which enable shooters to fire semiautomatic weapons at nearly the rate of automatic ones, according to CQ-Roll Call.
The bureau met with lawmakers again on Friday to reiterate yet again that Congress needs to pass a law on bump stocks before the ATF can enforce it.
And Congress hasn’t passed a gun law in at least 10 years.
“The ATF does NOT have the authority to address bump-fire stocks — and has made this point clear to Congress MULTIPLE times,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein tweeted Friday after the ATF briefing.
The California Democrat reintroduced a bill, the Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act, earlier this month to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of bump stocks and similar devices, CQ-Roll Call reported.
She has yet to find a GOP co-sponsor for her bill, although Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley signaled he was open to holding hearings on bump stocks.
Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, introduced the House version of Feinstein’s bill to ban bump stocks.
But Republican leadership on the Hill has been mum for more than a week after House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said ATF regulation would be “the smartest, quickest fix,” according to CQ-Roll Call.
The NRA has opposed each piece of legislation lawmakers have introduced so far.
Kristin Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said bump stocks aren’t the main prize for the NRA as it looks to line up lawmaker support ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections. “This is just a tactical sidestep,” Brown said. The big goal for the NRA is to pass a bill allowing concealed-carry gun permits issued in one state to be valid in all states — a measure that already has 200 co-sponsors in the House.
“They’re trying to rip apart our system ... and create an environment where you feel you have to carry a gun...because everyone else is,” Brown said.