“I’m doing it myself.”
President Donald Trump took a hard stance Monday against bump stocks in the wake of the deadly shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead.
“By the way, bump stocks, we’re writing that out. I’m writing that out myself. I don’t care if Congress does it or not,” he said of the controversial device. “I’m writing it out myself.”
A bump stock is attached at the end of a firearm, the part of the gun that rests on the user’s shoulder. It enables a semi-automatic weapon to move back and forth more quickly, making it fire at speeds close to that of a fully-automatic gun.
“You put it into the machine gun category, which is what it is,” Trump explained. “It becomes essentially a machine gun and nobody’s gonna be able — it’s gonna be very hard to get them.”
Trump made the comments during a White House meeting with governors from across the country who were in Washington, D. C., to discuss safety measures to better protect students from mass shootings.
Last week, the president signed a memo recommending U. S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions push for regulations to ban bump stocks. He told Sessions at the time he expects him to act on the recommendation “very soon.”
It’s worth noting that on Sunday, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that the gun rights advocacy organization “doesn’t back any ban” in response to a question about outlawing bump stocks.
Instead, Loesch said it is incumbent upon the U. S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to ensure it is enforcing current regulations that ban automatic weapons.
In order for bump stocks to be banned, though, the ATF would have to rewrite the definition of machine guns to include the attachment.
