'DUMP THE BUMP'

Ryan: Bar Vegas gun attachment

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday urged the Trump administration to ban bump stocks like those used in the Las Vegas massacre — and demanded to know how the devices ever became legal.

“We think the regulatory fix is the smartest, quickest fix, and I’d frankly like to know how it happened in the first place,” the Wisconsin Republican said during a news conference at the Capitol.

Democratic and some GOP lawmakers want Congress to pass legislation banning the attachment, which allows a semiautomatic weapon to mimic a fully automatic by firing a full magazine in seconds.

Stephen Paddock used bump stocks to turn his arsenal of assault rifles into rapid-firing weapons, killing 58 people and wounding nearly 500.

“We are still trying to assess why the ATF let this go through in the first place,” Ryan said, referring to the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which ruled the attachments are legal.

The decision came after a bump- stock manufacturer contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to ask it to evaluate a modified shoulder stock that was originally intended to allow people with disabilities to fire a gun.

In a 2010 letter in response, the ATF classified the bump stock as an attachment that “has no automatically functioning mechanical parts or springs and performs no automatic mechanical function when installed.”

Because the shooter would have to “apply constant forward pressure with the nonshooting hand and constant rearward pressure with the shooting hand,” it considered the stock a “firearm part” and ruled it should not be regulated under the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act.

Gun-reform advocates say that what’s really needed is congressional legislation.

“A ruling isn’t binding. It can be changed back,” said David Chipman, a former ATF agent now associated with the gun-reform group Americans for Responsible Solutions, according to The Hill.