possible legislation to ban bump stocks

[Sam1911]

Full-autos are not and should not be illegal nor should they be as heavily regulated as they are.

I never said full auto was illegal. I said bump fire stocks should be banned. As far as whether full auto should be heavily regulated or not, your opinion is just fine...but it is an opinion. And I do respect it. It would be nice to afforded the same respect.

I respect you as a person as a member. I do NOT respect your opinion, nor do I have any duty to do so. That opinion is awful. You, however, are a nice guy.

Because illegality stops people from being able to kill people? Because people who would commit mass murder care that an item they might make with a few dollars worth of parts is illegal?

Because it enables someone to wreak mass havoc within a limited timespan. It's the rate of fire that let him sling that much lead so fast, and the bump fire stocks made it super simple and easy to do.

There's a disconnect here. You can fire something like 5 shots a second with a semi-auto. That's 300 rounds per minute. About the same rate of fire as an M3 submachine gun. Let's guess that you could fire twice that many with a bumpfire stock. Fine. But the shooter isn't going to achieve a practical killing effect twice as great (or anything close to that) because he increased his rate of fire. That's not how automatic fire works at all.

There may be some degree of increased lethality. But it isn't large.

It's irrelevant anyway, because the guy didn't need a bumpfire stock nor full-auto to do what he did. Not at all. Could have produced the same effect with 'most any semi-auto rifle. He had 7 times more time to fire than he used. Bumpfire didn't make him appreciably more lethal.

The time he spent shooting shows that he was pretty darn lethal with the shots he got off. Enabled by bump fire stocks. It's basic throughput. Whether he needed them or not is irrelevant. He used them, on all of his rifles, as far as I've read. In the time he spent shooting, he would never have gotten off as many shots shooting semi-auto with the same casualty rate. When you're flinging lead like that so fast man, it's just no bueno.

It really ISNT just a question of through-put. Nobody who's used automatic weapons would say that.

If our rights were up to those of us with such shallow commitment to our rights and seeming complete inability to understand the technical flaws with these arguments, it would indeed be "Game Over."

Fortunately, it is NOT game over.

Shallow commitment? Man, you make a lot of assumptions here. And that is a problem. There are no technical flaws in more bullets in short period of time = more damage, is there? It's basic fact.

I just pointed them out. Yes, there are.

All of which dodges the actual problem that we should NOT be accepting culpability for this by giving up our guns. (Or, for many of us brave negotiators... ...giving up somebody else's weapons.)

 

[CoalTrain49]

Once again the misdirected focus is on federal legislation. I can't believe people are suggesting that NFA and the Hughes amendment could be repealed. I honestly have to laugh at that because I have a better chance of winning the lottery than a repeal of NFA, Hughes, GCA or Brady. In case anyone hasn't been paying attention the call from the majority is for more gun control, not less. Remember that Hillary won the popular vote and she is rabid AG.

Exactly how does one insure that an AR or high capacity detachable mags weather the increasing hysteria against them? You can't legislate their perpetual existence. Even if NFA was repealed, does anyone believe you would be able to buy a machine gun in your state? You can't even buy an AR in CA. ( 39m people) and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Prohibition was repealed in 1933 but there are many towns in UT where you can't buy a bottle of Jack Daniels, and UT is a pretty big state.

 

[stonecutter2]

Banning bump stocks won’t stop something like this. Stiffer background checks won’t either. They already banned murder. Yet here we are. It’s utterly impossible to legislate against evil. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

It's a matter of the amount of lead one can throw so quickly with evil intent. This incident, for me, really demonstrated that full auto fire increased the casualties in the time the shooter was active. Rate of fire mattered.

Banning bump stocks won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

 

[BigBore44]

Oh....that is sad, sad, sad.


There have been a few time, a VERY few times, when I've considered cancelling my NRA membership. And this is one of those times.


I know it's just political maneuvering most probably intended to sound appeasing while expecting nothing at all to ever come to a real piece of legislation, but it is LOW. And sacrifices much for a questionable short-term gain.

I think I know exactly what you’re referring to. I just heard the NRA is coming out against bump stocks. I will wait to hear what Wayne actually has to say. Then I might just cancel my membership.

 

[stonecutter2]

There's a disconnect here. You can fire something like 5 shots a second with a semi-auto. That's 300 rounds per minute. About the same rate of fire as an M3 submachine gun. Let's guess that you could fire twice that many with a bumpfire stock. Fine. But the shooter isn't going to achieve a practical killing effect twice as great (or anything close to that) because he increased his rate of fire. That's not how automatic fire works at all.

There may be some degree of increased lethality. But it isn't large.

This was 20,000 people in a fenced-in pen, relatively close together like at most outdoor concerts. You're saying doubling the rounds firing at them wouldn't be a large increase in lethality. I'm missing your point on automatic fire in this example...sorry man But thanks for calling me a nice guy and for being our mod!

 

[Rio Laxas]

I think I know exactly what you’re referring to. I just heard the NRA is coming out against bump stocks. I will wait to hear what Wayne actually has to say. Then I might just cancel my membership.

Read my previous post. The NRA wants ATF to rule against bump fire stocks.

 

[Sam1911]

I'm missing your point on automatic fire in this example...sorry man

That's pretty much it. The guy stopped firing for reasons of his own, but he had all the time in the world to fire as many shots as he wanted, bumpfire or not. How is it realistic to say bumpfire made him appreciably more lethal than the 300 RPM he could have hit without it? And when you count time to reload or switch guns, the difference gets even smaller.


Again, though, it matters not at all.
1) The second amendment describes ARMS. Not just the target rifles or "sporting" guns.
2) If you give up here and say that banning a gun or gun accessory is OK because of the possible public safety ramifications, you just gave away the WHOLE, ENTIRE fight. Because if it is ok to ban a gun because of what someone might do with it, there is no logical leg to stand on and claim that any gun is safe enough for us lowly citizens to own.

 

[Rio Laxas]

It's a matter of the amount of lead one can throw so quickly with evil intent. This incident, for me, really demonstrated that full auto fire increased the casualties in the time the shooter was active. Rate of fire mattered.

Banning bump stocks won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

I'm not convinced that is true.

Several readers have pointed out that accuracy is less important when a shooter is firing on a dense crowd, as in Las Vegas. In that situation, even a shooter firing blindly is apt to hit someone. But that does not mean the injury will be fatal. Paddock might have killed a similar number of people if he had fired more slowly and carefully. Notably, the ratio of nonfatal to fatal injuries in Las Vegas was about 9 to 1, which is unusually high for a mass shooting, even taking into account that some of those injuries were not caused by gunfire. (Most were.) By contrast, the ratio of nonfatal to fatal injuries was less than 2 to 1 in the next four deadliest mass shootings.

http://reason.com/blog/2017/10/03/did-bump-stocks-make-the-las-vegas-shoot

 

[BigBore44]

It's a matter of the amount of lead one can throw so quickly with evil intent. This incident, for me, really demonstrated that full auto fire increased the casualties in the time the shooter was active. Rate of fire mattered.

Banning bump stocks won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

I’m sorry. But that is absolutely false. You’re shooting fish packed in a barrel. Had he substituted an .223 for 308, he could have done the same damage with even less rounds.

As has been stated, you don’t even need a bump stock to bump fire. Look back early into this thread. There’s a photo of a thumb+belt loop = a bump stock or something to that effect. I can dump 20 rounds from my M1A in a little over a second with this method.

Should we ban thumbs? Or belt loops? Or semiauto firearms based on the potential to do harm? How about we ban large congregations of people? Can’t have a “mass” shooting when there are no “masses” to shoot at.

 

[Elkins45]

One wonders if rapid aimed fire might have been even more deadly? Aiming at torsos rather than spraying rounds indiscriminately at the mass, in other words. It would be ironic if his use of the bumpfire might have actually lowered the number of center-mass hits and therefore the number of deaths.

 

[Duster340]

Apparently the NRA believes these things serve no logical purpose. Just recommended Congress restricts them.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...new-regulations-after-las-vegas-shooting.html

 

[ATLDave]

One wonders if rapid aimed fire might have been even more deadly? Aiming at torsos rather than spraying rounds indiscriminately at the mass, in other words. It would be ironic if his use of the bumpfire might have actually lowered the number of center-mass hits and therefore the number of deaths.

At a couple hundred yards, with packed concert-goers, no.

There's a reason the military uses machine guns to create beaten zones at a distance.

Whether these things should be legal or are protected by the 2nd amendment is one thing, but to pretend that full-auto weapons (including functionally-full-auto weapons) do not have substantial additional capacity to inflict mass casualties is just silly.

Read some military history about the early deployments of machine guns up to and including WWI.

 

[Nickotym]

NRA brass is acting like a bunch of sellouts!

 

[Plan2Live]

Well I can't copy Duster340's quote in here for some reason but yes, it looks like the majority of the respondents here are at odds with the NRA on this one.

 

[Mitlov]

I'm not convinced that is true.



http://reason.com/blog/2017/10/03/did-bump-stocks-make-the-las-vegas-shoot

Most mass shootings take place within enclosed rooms or within feet or yards from the victims, not from several hundred yards like this incident. I wouldn’t agree that the injury-to-death rate indicates that the bump-fire stock saved lives or is responsible for the higher rate of nonfatal injuries. I think that ratio is just a result of the distance involved.

 

[Rio Laxas]

Most mass shootings take place within enclosed rooms or within feet or yards from the victims, not from several hundred yards like this incident. I wouldn’t agree that the injury-to-death rate indicates that the bump-fire stock saved lives or is responsible for the higher rate of nonfatal injuries. I think that ratio is just a result of the distance involved.

I agree that distance was likely a far more significant factor. I would not at all say that the bump fire stock saved lives, but I don't think there is any convincing evidence one way or the other that it made this more lethal or less lethal. It does, however, seem likely to me that an actual machinegun in the hands of someone who knew how to use it would have made this more lethal. (Disclaimer: I have no experience with bump fire stocks or machineguns, but my impression is that machineguns are significantly better at being machineguns than bump fired semi-autos.)

 

[coloradokevin]

I'd gladly trade every semi automatic firearm we've got, including my own semi-autos, for those people to be back, living. Manual actions are fine, I doubt many of those who invest the time to master those are mass killers.

The Newtown kids would have been in seventh grade this year. The Columbine kids would have been their parents. The folks at Aurora, Pulse and Rte.91

Well, it's just too bad that's not possible. Your argument here is an emotional one, not a practical one.

So, may I ask:

Would you also give up every one of your manual action firearms to bring back the lives of people who died by being shot with those?

Would you give up your car to bring back the lives of people who were killed in automobile accidents?

Get rid of swimming pools to bring back the lives of every drowning victim?

Give up your steak knives for the lives of those who have been stabbed?

Box cutters, due to September 11th?


Do you see where I'm going with this yet? You can't bring back the lives of people by getting rid of your guns, and you can't prevent another tragedy by doing so, either. You clearly can't reasonably rid yourself of every implement that is capable of doing harm or causing death. Just because a psychopath did something terrible doesn't mean that the rest of us are more dangerous now because we own semi-automatic firearms. And, I promise you I'm not saying this because I "haven't mastered" the manual actions... I'll put my skills with a bolt gun up against 99.5% of the people on this forum. In fact, a skilled person with a bolt gun could have unleashed a terrible death toll from that room, too.

 

[Sam1911]

There's a reason the military uses machine guns to create beaten zones at a distance.

Yes, but it isn't actually exactly analogous to this situation.

Whether the shooter in this case would have been more or less lethal with high-volume semi-automatic aimed fire or bump-firing toward a massed group would be an interesting test to try and run. I'll admit I'm not 100% sure of the answer. This probably isn't a good time to go about conducting such a test.

 

[ATLDave]

Yes, but it isn't actually exactly analogous to this situation.

When I watched/listened to the video of the shooting, I thought it was full auto. I think, in this particularly situation, it is exactly analogous. Have you watched/listened to the video?

 

[Rio Laxas]

When I watched/listened to the video of the shooting, I thought it was full auto. I think, in this particularly situation, it is exactly analogous. Have you watched/listened to the video?

Emulating or attempting to emulate a rate of fire is only one part of the equation. Is a bump fired semi-auto aimed and controlled as easily as a machinegun which is designed for that rate of fire? It seems to me that the extra movement involved in a bump fire stock would have a negative impact on both of those things.

 

[stonecutter2]

Emulating or attempting to emulate a rate of fire is only one part of the equation. Is a bump fired semi-auto aimed and controlled as easily as a machinegun which is designed for that rate of fire?

I had a lot more trouble aiming an AR with a 30 round mag that had a slide fire on it than I did with a full auto MP5 (9mm) or Thompson (45ACP)...but those rounds aren't exactly analogous. Honestly I had trouble initially getting the slide fire to just run instead of burst fire. Something about the motion felt different - I got better over time but I still didn't feel like I had enough control. Just my experience.

 

[ATLDave]

The video and results here seem to suggest that at least this individual was able to run it consistently in the manner of a full-auto gun. "Aiming" isn't super relevant when you're talking about targeting an area/crowd.

FWIW, prior to this incident, I generally had the same impression of the slide-fire/bump-fire stocks... that they were a poor imitation that were hinky enough to probably not be meaningfully equivalent of full-auto and thus not a big deal. I do occasionally change my mind based on new information/evidence. This is one of those times. I think full-auto guns are different than all other guns... and I think the slide-fire/bump-fire stuff has gotten good enough as a technology that it is much more like full-auto than not.

 

[coloradokevin]

It's a matter of the amount of lead one can throw so quickly with evil intent. This incident, for me, really demonstrated that full auto fire increased the casualties in the time the shooter was active. Rate of fire mattered.

Banning bump stocks won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

I find this all to be a rather curious argument coming from a person who flies an avatar of the Gadsden Flag.

Regardless, you're going down the road of an emotional argument that has been played out time and time again, over many, many years. In fact, I'd argue that every single time someone does something bad and newsworthy with a gun, someone else is standing up calling for a ban on that item. What would be left of our rights if we gave in every single time someone asked us for a concession? How long would it take for Americans to lose their gun rights (like has happened to people in the UK and Australia) if we gave in simply because we (as individuals) didn't own whichever implement was on the chopping block on that day?

Let me re-write your sentence a few times here, using actual arguments that have been debated in congress:

Banning high capacity magazines won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

Banning AR-15's won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

Banning semi-automatics won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

Banning collapsible stocks won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

Banning suppressors won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

Banning online ammo sales won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

Banning multiple firearms purchases per month won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

Banning open carry won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

Banning people from buying firearms without seeing a psychologist first won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.

Banning high powered rifles won't stop things like this, but it would make it harder for someone to do this level of damage so easily with a semi-auto rifle.


I could go on, and on, and on. These are REAL arguments put forth by the anti-gun lobby, and their members of congress. These are REAL scenarios that have been considered, and would have been implemented, could those people pull it off. While you may be okay (personally) with some of the concessions I just listed above, I'm sure there's something on that list you aren't willing to give up. The people who would like to see guns banned will never find a point where they believe we have sufficient legislation on firearms. Every tragic shooting is a bit different, and after every shooting they will find a reason why something needs to be regulated or banned. The goal is not gun control, the goal is to rid our nation of guns. Understand your opponent a bit better, and you'll begin to understand the passionate responses you're seeing from many of us around here.

I'll conclude all of this with one simple question to you:

What level of gun control is enough for you?

 

[Mitlov]

Well, it's just too bad that's not possible. Your argument here is an emotional one, not a practical one.

So, may I ask:

Would you also give up every one of your manual action firearms to bring back the lives of people who died by being shot with those?

Would you give up your car to bring back the lives of people who were killed in automobile accidents?

Get rid of swimming pools to bring back the lives of every drowning victim?

Give up your steak knives for the lives of those who have been stabbed?

Box cutters, due to September 11th?

Of all the arguments against banning bump-fire stocks, this is the weakest, because all of those other things have practical and beneficial utility for lawful purposes that bump-fire stocks simply do not. They’re useless for a well-regulated militia, they’re useless for self-defense, they’re useless for hunting, and they’re useless for competitive sport.

I'll put my skills with a bolt gun up against 99.5% of the people on this forum. In fact, a skilled person with a bolt gun could have unleashed a terrible death toll from that room, too.

Using a Remington 700, Charles Whitman (USMC Sharpshooter Badge recipient) killed 17 and injured 31 in a much, much longer period of time. In a few minutes, this perpetrator killed three times that amount and injured twenty times that amount.

 

[alexander45]

Because it enables someone to wreak mass havoc within a limited timespan. It's the rate of fire that let him sling that much lead so fast

I'd suggest remembering this quote of yours when they go after semi autos again or shot guns holding more than 3 rounds in the tube firing their "death clouds" like they did during the AWB