Just after Christmas, attorneys general from 23 states and the District of Columbia urged the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a federal rule banning bump stocks.
We concur and if the high court doesn’t get it right, Congress should get to work and spell out the ban in a new law.
The high court agreed to take up the issue in November after differing lower court decisions over the ban, which was put in place by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives six years ago by the then-President Donald Trump administration.
The ATFE bump stock ban went into effect after a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2017.
You remember that, of course. A crazed gunman in the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel opened fire with bump stock-equipped AR-15s on a crowd of 20,000 people attending a country music festival across the street.
People are also reading…
By the time the smoke had cleared and the screaming had stopped, 58 people were killed and an additional 500 were wounded or injured in the rush for cover. The gunman, Stephen Paddock, killed himself before he could be apprehended.
The attorneys general told the court in their petition that the ban aligns with longstanding prohibitions — dating to 1934 — against public ownership of most machine guns and that bump stocks, which use the recoil of the weapon to rapidly fire without additional trigger pulls belong in that category.
“Bump stocks were deliberately developed and marketed to circumvent federal law banning civilian use of automatic weapons,” said District of Columbia Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb, “These devices are designed to convert semiautomatic firearms to illegal machine guns, with foreseeable tragic and deadly consequences. We urge the Supreme Court to prioritize public safety and the safety of law enforcement officers by upholding a reasonable, well-established rule classifying bump stocks as banned automatic weapons.”
We can’t undo the horror and bloodletting at Mandalay Bay, but we can take steps to prevent the next crazed shooting by keeping the ban on bump stocks.
If the Supreme Court can’t see its way to support the ban, then Congress should step in and pass a single piece of legislation to enforce it. An exception may be needed for disabled hunters, but for the most part no reasonable purpose justifies nearly full automatic firepower -- not for hunting, and not for self-protection.
Consider that Stephen Paddock, at one point in the tower at Mandalay Bay, was able to fire 90 shots in a 10 second period using bump stocks. A machine gun can fire 98 shots in a seven second period.
There’s not a deer herd or a concert crowd that can stand up to that rain of fire.
The Supreme Court should get that.
