Proposed bump stock ban is really an opening to ban ordinary firearms

Here is John Lott on the proposed bump stock ban.

JL is on target.  The anti-gun crowd is using the Las Vegas massacre as an opportunity to make it possible to ban ordinary semiautomatic rifles.

A law banning bump stocks will not accomplish that.  It is easy to make one out of readily available materials.  The proposed law would make it possible to ban a trigger, since (paraphrasing the proposed law) in combination with, for example, a bump stock, it is an integral part of a combination of parts designed to and functions to increase the rate of fire of a semiautomatic rifle but does not convert the semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun.

It is a mistake to ban parts of ordinary firearms simply because adding a bump stock or other external part can increase the rate of fire to that approximating an automatic weapon.  Rather, it should be illegal to 1) convert in any manner a semiautomatic firearm so that it fires at a rate approximating an automatic firearm, and 2) banning only parts that do so that are not semiautomatic firearm parts.  In other words, no parts should be banned that are semiautomatic firearm parts designed for semiautomatic operation.

Here is JL's comment.
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Sometimes in the rush “to do something” after a tragedy, politicians put forward bills that could easily cause more harm than good. The legislation being put forward to ban “bump stocks,” a firearm accessory that uses the recoil of the semi-automatic gun to fire more rapidly, might end up banning all semi-automatic guns. Take a bill in the House by Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican, which has 28 co-sponsors. The key part of this bill is that it bans “any part or combination of parts that is [SIC] designed and functions to increase the rate of fire of a semiautomatic rifle” and “any such part or combination of parts.” The bill is available below. The problem is that this reads so broadly that a semiautomatic gun has parts that when used in combination with a bump stock or other similar device that will increase the rate of fire of a rifle.

People have three types of guns

— Manually loaded guns. After firing a bullet, the shooter has to physically load the next bullet into the chamber of the gun.

— Semi-automatic. One pull of the trigger, one bullet fired, the gun reloads itself. One pull of the trigger, one bullet fired, and so on.

— Fully automatic. As long as the trigger is depressed, bullets will continue being fired. It isn’t necessary to pull the trigger a second time to fire another bullet.

If politicians actually want to ban all semi-automatic guns, they should be explicit and say so. But it would be a real problem for people who use guns in self-defense. Not everyone has time to manually reload their guns when confronted by criminals. If one’s first shot misses or there are multiple criminals, people may not have the time to manually reload their gun so that they have a second or third shot.