Ban automatic gunfire equipment

This argument can be made in 10 seconds. Find any cellphone video of the massacre in Las Vegas, and listen to the rat-tat-tat of a gun capable of firing hundreds of bullets per minute. Listen for 10 seconds to the confusion, the terror and finally the screams of concertgoers. And then ask yourself why, in America, is it permissible to buy attachments that can essentially turn otherwise legal weapons into illegal machine guns.

Eight days ago, most Americans had probably never heard of a device known as a bump stock. Ostensibly designed to make it easier for someone with a disability to handle a gun, the attachment was allegedly used by Stephen Paddock to kill people as quickly and efficiently as possible from his perch in a high-rise Las Vegas hotel room last Sunday night.

And the bump stock is not the only one. Another after-market modification known as a trigger crank can be attached to the trigger guard and allow a shooter to create a Gatling gun effect. Available online and in some stores, the trigger crank can be purchased for as little as $50. Why are these devices legal?

Why are these devices legal?

A small but important crack has opened in the solid wall of opposition to any laws that might reduce such horrific mass shootings in America.

Democrats and some Republicans say they want to discuss a federal law that would ban the manufacture, possession or sale of “bump stocks,” an add-on device that can effectively turn a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon that fires as fast as a fully automatic gun.

Banning bump stocks and similar add-ons appears to be an approach that reasonable lawmakers in both parties can embrace. Law-abiding Americans should urge their representatives to pursue the measure as quickly as possible.

Authorities believe Paddock used a bump stock on one or more of his guns. Semi-automatic guns are lethal enough. But a $200 bump stock turns a gun into a weapon for indiscriminate massacre, accelerating the carnage and threatening not only civilians but also law enforcement officers and other first responders.

The only reason to own and use such a device is to amplify a weapon’s killing power.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein once tried to have these accessories banned as part of a larger bill to get rid of assault weapons. That legislation went nowhere in 2013, despite emerging from the shadow of the Sandy Hook tragedy in Newtown, Conn., months earlier.

Now, in the wake of another mass shooting, Feinstein, Sen. Bill Nelson and two dozen other Democratic senators introduced the Automatic Gun Fire Protection Act, which would prohibit sale or possession of bump stocks and similar mechanisms that increase the rate of fire of semi-automatic rifles. The measure exempts authorized law enforcement officials from the ban. “I’m a hunter and have owned guns my whole life,” Nelson said, “But these automatic weapons are not for hunting, they are for killing.’’

Several Republican senators have said the proposal is worth a hearing, which is progress. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate’s leadership, said Wednesday Congress should at least explore the topic.

Other Republicans made similar statements.

More than two dozen Democratic senators support Feinstein’s bill, including Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

That’s welcome news. “I don’t know anybody who goes deer hunting that needs to retrofit a gun to fire hundreds of rounds per minute,” she said. “It’s to slaughter people.”

Predictably, there was a rush on bump stocks at some gun stores. And any minute now, Second Amendment advocates will insist banning bump stocks somehow violates the Constitution.

It does not. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in 2008.

He was correct.

Bump stocks are like shouting fire in a crowded theater — dangerous and unnecessary. Banning them should be quick and easy.

A ban on the device should be the one modest gun-control measure that both Republicans and Democrats in Congress can embrace.

This story was originally published October 7, 2017 at 1:24 PM with the headline "Ban automatic gunfire equipment."