Candidate Trump claimed that former President Barack Obama would “take away your guns.” President Trump has now ordered all gun owners with “Bump Stop” modifications on their AR/AK style rifles to remove, destroy or turn them into the ATF within 90 days.
The Trump administration targeted bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like automatic firearms, since late March. The devices will be banned under a federal law that prohibits machine guns, according to a senior Justice Department official.
Bump stocks became a focal point of the national gun control debate after a tragic October 2017 Las Vegas Mandalay Bay hotel shooting that resulted in 58 deaths and hundreds of related injuries. Mainstream media labeled the incident as the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The regulation, signed by Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Tuesday morning, will go into effect 90 days after it is formally published in the Federal Register, which is expected to happen this Friday.
The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly ahead of the regulation’s formal publication and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Back in March, President Trump said his administration would “ban” the devices, which he said “turn legal weapons into illegal machines.”
Shortly after the President’s comments, the Justice Department announced that it had started the process to define bump stocks as machine guns. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sought public comment on the proposal, drawing more than 35,000 comments.
The amended regulations reverse a 2010 ATF decision that prohibited the regulation of bump stocks unless Congress changed existing firearms law or passed a new one. In the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, there was a growing push by some members of Congress to ban bump stocks, but no legislation was passed. At least 10 states have sought their own restrictions on the devices.
Bump stock owners will be required to either surrender them to the ATF or destroy them by late March 2019. The change was subject to legal review and the Justice Department and ATF are ready to fight any legal challenge that may be brought, the official added.
The amended rule was met almost immediately with resistance from gun rights advocates, including Gun Owners of America, which said it would file a lawsuit against the Justice Department and the ATF in order to protect gun owners from the “unconstitutional regulations.”
“These regulations implicate Second Amendment rights, and courts should be highly suspect when an agency changes its ‘interpretation’ of a statute in order to impair the exercise of enumerated constitutional rights,” the organization’s executive director, Erich Pratt, said.
Police said the gunman in the Las Vegas massacre, Stephen Paddock, fired for over 10 minutes using multiple weapons outfitted with bump stocks. Paddock fatally shot himself leaving behind 23 assault-style weapons, including 14 fitted with rapid-fire “bump stock” devices, strewn about the room near his body.
The largest manufacturer of bump stocks, Slide Fire Solutions, announced in April that it would stop taking orders and shut down its website. The remaining stock is now being sold by another company, Forth Worth-based RW Arms.