The Trump administration just proposed banning bump stocks

A rifle equipped with a bump stock
(Image credit: George Frey/Getty Images)

The Department of Justice on Saturday posted a notice of a regulatory proposal to ban bump stocks, the modification for semi-automatic weapons that permitted the Las Vegas attacker to shoot about 500 people in 10 minutes in October. The DOJ seeks to change the legal "definition of 'machinegun' in the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act [to include] bump stock type devices," which would effect a ban.

That change would also reverse an Obama-era determination of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that bump stocks do not fit the machine gun definition and thus cannot be prohibited without new legislation from Congress. Some ATF officials believe that 2010 decision was correct and the Trump administration does not have legal authority to proceed with this ban, the Chicago Tribune reports.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.