Trump Shakes Up Second Amendment With Bump Stock Decision
President Donald Trump shocked Second Amendment supporters across the nation Tuesday when, responding to the mass shooting last week in Florida, he announced potential plans to ban bump stocks.
“(A) few moments ago I signed a memorandum directing the Attorney General to propose regulations to ban all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns,” he said during a White House briefing, according to The Hill.
Such a ban would include bumps stocks, which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives defines as “devices used with a semiautomatic firearm to increase the firearm’s cyclic firing rate to mimic nearly continuous automatic fire.”
They essentially transform semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic ones, though just to be clear, the suspect in last week’s mass shooting used an AR-15 not equipped with a bump stock.
Nevertheless, though shocking to some, Trump’s announcement should have been expected.
Following the mass shooting in Las Vegas last year, which was reportedly committed by a shooter with a bump stock “in his arsenal,” the president directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions “to clarify whether certain bump stock devices like the once used in Las Vegas are illegal under current law,” according to The Hill.
In fact, even the National Rifle Association called for added regulations on bump stocks, as reported by NBC News, though it stopped short of advocating for a complete ban.
“The National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law,” the NRA’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, and its chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, said in a statement.
“The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.”
A blanket ban would certainly count as an additional regulation, albeit a draconian one that would have made no difference in almost every mass shooting that’s occurred in the past ten years, as noted by Breitbart guns expert Awr Hawkins.
Even the libertarians at Reason magazine pointed out that while “(s)hootings like the one that happened in Florida last week, or in Las Vegas last year, are no doubt horrific … banning bump stocks will likely do nothing to prevent such terrible events from happening again.”
If the president wants to move forward with a ban anyway, then so be it, though we at the Conservative Tribune implore him to carefully weigh his decision with mounds of evidence.
And by evidence, we don’t mean the shrill cries of the left’s many gun-control advocates. We mean hard, concrete facts, such as the fact that bump stocks can easily be reproduced with 3D printers.
Or the additional facts that “‘(b)ump-Stock’ devices are for novelty, not accuracy” and “(o)ther accessories will do the same thing,” as pointed out by Hawkins.
These facts might be inconvenient for leftists to hear, but unlike their emotional demands for gun control, they’re based in reality.
Please share this story on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what you think about President Donald Trump’s stunning proposal.
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