WASHINGTON — Washington lawmakers debated whether bump stocks should be banned in the United States at the Capitol on Friday.
Bump stocks are attachments that allow a semiautomatic rifle to fire bullets faster. The shooter in the Las Vegas massacre, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, used bump stocks on nearly a dozen rifles during the killing spree.
The use of the bump stocks allowed him to fire more than 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes. During the shooting, 60 people were killed and more than 400 were hurt.
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The first administration of President-elect Donald Trump implemented a rule banning bump stocks after the shooting, but over the summer, the U.S. Supreme Court struck that rule down.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill heard from a survivor of the Las Vegas shooting, gun safety advocates and gun rights supporters about how to move forward.
Laura O’Donnell, a survivor of the Las Vegas mass shooting, testified before Congress.
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“We heard a pop, pop, pop, at first thinking it was fireworks,” O’Donnell, a retired Chicago police lieutenant, said. “But then a few seconds later we heard it again and we knew it was gunfire.”
She told members of Congress that the shooter had devices which let him fire faster on nearly a dozen rifles.
“I believe that if the shooter did not have a bump stock, more people would have escaped. Less people would have been injured and of course less would have died,” O’Donnell said.
During the first Trump administration, bump stocks were banned federally.
“The Republican-appointed Justices concluded wrongly in my view, that the Trump administration could not define bump stocks as machine guns under the National Firearms Act,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.
However, others say with the current Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the rule, it’s now up to lawmakers to act.
“If you want to change the law, you have to go to Congress and get Congress to amend the law. That’s not the job of the executive branch. It’s the job of the legislative branch,” Mark Chenoweth, New Civil Liberties Alliance, said.
Senate Democrats are pushing for a bill to make it clear that the National Firearms Act does include bump stocks, but it faces Republican opposition. Gun rights supporters argue the focus should not be on limiting the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
“There is not a gun violence epidemic in our country, but there is a violent crime epidemic,” Zack Smith, Heritage Foundation, said.
The bill in Congress to ban bump stocks has been filed, but with Republican majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, it’s not expected to make it through the 2025 legislative session.
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