Press Release
Posted:
WASHINGTON – U.S. Congressman David N. Cicilline (RI-01) and more than 130 co-sponsors, including House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Chair Mike Thompson (CA-05) introduced legislation today to ban the manufacture, possession, transfer, sale, or importation of bump stocks like the one used to murder 59 innocent men and women earlier this week in Las Vegas.
“No person should possess a device that turns a semi-automatic rifle into the equivalent of a machine gun,” said Cicilline, who serves as Vice Chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. “The sole purpose of these devices is to fire as many bullets as possible as quickly as possible. I’m introducing this bill today because we cannot become a country where the carnage in Las Vegas becomes the new normal.”
“Bump stocks are a workaround existing law that make semi-automatic firearms function like full automatics,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, Chair of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force. “These devices drastically increase the weapons’ lethality. We don’t know how many lives could have been spared in Las Vegas had the shooter not had bump stocks, but know we must act to address this loophole.”
The Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act prohibits the sale of bump stocks, which were developed within the past decade to modify semi-automatic rifles. When replacing the fixed stock on a rifle, a bump stock allows the shooter to fire at a rate of 400 to 800 rounds per minute, replicating the rate of fire of a fully automatic weapon (or “machine gun”) that propels multiple bullets with a single trigger pull.
Last night, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) confirmed that the Las Vegas shooter had 12 bump stocks attached to rifles in his hotel room. Audio from the attack indicates he was able to fire his weapons at a rate of 9 bullets per second during an attack that lasted 9 to 11 minutes.
Fully automatic firearms are highly-regulated, requiring an extensive FBI background check and approval from the buyer’s local police department. Several states, including California, New York, and Rhode Island, have generally prohibited the possession of fully automatic firearms. The sale of bump stocks, however, was approved by the U.S. Government in 2010.
A PDF copy of the Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act can be downloaded by clicking here.