The National Rifle Association (NRA) has a history of supporting gun rights when its convenient but throwing gun rights under the buss when its politically expedient. That being the case, it probably came as no surprise that the organization expressed support for legal restrictions on bump stocks:
The National Rifle Association has called for “additional regulations” on bump-stocks, a rapid fire device used by the Las Vegas massacre gunman.
The group said: “Devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.”
It would have been nice if the NRA would have at least waited until the fight began before capitulating. Not surprisingly, the Republicans have expressed a willingness to implement such a restriction. Despite their rhetoric, like the NRA, Republicans have a tendency to support gun control whenever opposing it becomes politically inconvenient.
The bump stock IS a device that allows a semiautomatic rifle to function like a fully automatic rifle.
It effectively changes the means of activating the weapon, from the actual trigger mechanism to the foward grip. The user applies a forward force upon the forward grip, which pushes the gun and the trigger mechanism against the trigger finger which is held stationary against a rest or stop. Upon firing, the gun recoils backward allowing the trigger mechanism to reset. The forward force pushes the weapon and trigger forward again, repeating the cycle.
The trigger operation, in this case, is not a traditional pull of the actual trigger, but the forward force placed on the fore stock.
The bump fire stock is designed to circumvent the letter of the law. I don’t support bump fire stocks, because they’re a threat to maintaining legal protection of semi-automatics, and a threat to opening up the NFA registry. The Las Vegas attacks have put the libertarian gun culture on the defense.
There is a fair chance that the Las Vegas shooter launched his attack, not just to cause injury and harm to the concert goers, but to create division and discord. His too was packed with weapons, most were not used, that had the features that aggitate gun control advocates. Evil black rifles, with bump stocks, bipods, vertical fore grips, scopes and reflex sights, high capacity mags, flash hiders. It’s a laundry list of gun controllers worst fears.
Strangely, nothing that would require tax stamps – actual full auto or suppressors.
I’m not claiming government conspiracy. I think he did this to screw everything up and further divide the nation. I think that he calculated this attack was likely to spark political discord and drive gun control efforts.
He was an accountant. There’s a sort of pragmatic logic to it all. If he assumed that gun control was a good thing that would save lives (it’s not). He may have thought to create an event which would result in tighter gun controls. If the number of lives he thinks would be saved in the long term exceed the number of lives lost in the short term, then its easy to see how he might think there would be a benefit. This, of course, is totally incongruous with individual rights, the Constitution, and most peoples morals, but then, pragmatism is always the word political ideology.
This is why I hate pragmatism. It always leads to compromise, which always leads to the government obtaining more power at the expense of the people.
If the NRA had any morals, it would be fighting to repeal the NFA instead of adding more stuff to it.