Owners of bump stocks under gun
Days before having to give up devices, many resent ban
Device to become illegal nationwide starting Tuesday.
BOISE, Idaho — David Lunsford is an avid gun owner with a firing rangeon his Texas spread. With bump stocks about to be banned by the U.S. government, he grudgingly decided to sell off his and let someone else figure out what to do with them.
“If I get caught with one, I’m a felon, and it seems like to me that’s entrapment in the biggest way. I bought that thing legally with my hard-earned money,” said the 60-year-old Lunsford, who has at one time owned six AR-15 rifles that he built fromkits.
The bump stock — the attachment used by the killer during the 2017 Las Vegas massacre to make his weapons fire rapidly like machine guns — will become illegal Tuesday in the only major gun restriction imposed by the federal government in the past few years, a period that has seen massacres in places like Las Vegas; Thousand Oaks, Calif.; Orlando and Parkland, Fla.; and Sutherland Springs, Texas.
Unlike with the decadelong assault weapons ban, the government isn’t allowing existing owners to keep their bump stocks. They mustbedestroyed or turned over to authorities. And the government isn’t offering compensation for the devices, which can cost hundreds of dollars. Violators can face up to 10 years in prison and thousands in fines.
Lunsford bought three bump stocks over the years and wanted to recoup at least some of the money he shelled out, but it bothers him that he and others have been put in this position.
“I’ve never committed a crime with it, and just because of that one killer up in LasVegas that used one that killed a bunch of people, they’re going to make people pay for it,” he said.
But Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, said: “Itwas because of bump stocks that the gunman in Las Vegas was able to kill 58 people froma hotel window. It just goes to show the incredible lethality and dangers of these accessories.”
The prohibition goes into effect less than two weeks after the mosque shootings in New Zealand that left 50 people dead. NewZealand’s prime minister reacted swiftly to the bloodshed by announcing Thursday a ban on military-style semi-automatic firearms and highcapacity magazines.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives first ruled that bump stocks were legal in 2010, and since then, the government estimates more than 500,000 have been sold.
Theywere originally created to make it easier for people with disabilities to fire a gun. Thedevice essentially replaces the gun’s stock and pistol grip and causes the weapon to buck back and forth, repeatedly “bumping” the trigger against the shooter’s finger.
Technically, that means the finger is pulling the trigger with each round fired, a distinction that led the ATF to allow the devices.
Theywere considered by most gun owners to be a novelty and weren’t widely known until a gunman attached bump stocks to several of theAR-type rifleshe used to rain bullets on concertgoers outside his high-riseLas Vegas hotel room.
The attachments were swiftly condemned by even ardent gun supporters, including President Donald Trump, who directed the Justice Department to rewrite the regulations to ban them. The impending ban was announced in midDecember.
Owners are being advised to either destroy them by crushing, melting or cutting them up or set up an appointment with the ATF to hand the devices over.
A week before the ban was set to take effect, bump stocks were being sold on websites and by at least one company that took over the inventory of Slide Fire, the Texas manufacturer that was the leading maker and has since shut down.
Ryan Liskey, of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, said he isn’t sure what to do with his bump stock.
“Do they have authority to do this? No. Is it a machine gun? No,” the 30year-old Liskey said. “So do I followan unconstitutional edict from the Department of Justice or do we stand our ground?”
ATF spokeswoman April Langwell said “a number of people” have already turned in their devices to ATF offices across the U.S., but shewouldn’t say howmany. Starting this week, a person in possession of a bump stock can face federal charges of illegally possessing a machine gun.
“We’re going to enforce the law and those in possession will be subject to prosecution,” Langwell said.
The rule was met almost immediately with resistance from gun rights advocates. A federal judge in Utah refused to block it last week, and in February, a judge in Washington said the Trump administration can move forward with it, saying it was reasonable for the ATF to determine a bump stock performs the same function as a machine gun. An appeals court is set to hear augments in the case on Friday.
Gun Owners of America, a gun- rights group, is among those challenging the ban. GOA’s executive director, Erich Pratt, said the measure is an abuse of power and an end run around Congress.
“We think it’s really dangerous for a regulatory agency tobe able tojust turn on a dime. For 10 years they said that bump stocks fit within the law, they were perfectly legal. And then they reversed themselves and said, ‘Oh, this piece of plastic is a machine gun,’ ” Pratt said. “If they can do that and wave the magic wand, they can say anything is a machine gun. It’s like banning smoking by declaring cigarettes are sticks of dynamite.”
Gun- rights advocates and gun-safety activists agree on one thing: The ban would have been seen as more acceptable had Congress tackled the issue and enacted a law, rather than relying on a federal agency to do it administratively.