By: Evan Perez, Laura Jarrett and David Shortell
CNN
Washington (CNN) The Trump administration plans to announce the long-anticipated federal rule officially banning bump stocks in the coming days, according to US officials familiar with the matter.
Bump stocks gained national attention last year after a gunman in Las Vegas rigged his weapons with the devices to fire on concertgoers, killing 58 people. President Donald Trump vowed to outlaw the devices soon after the tragedy, and some lawmakers on Capitol Hill urged him to back a permanent legislative fix.
But opposition from lawmakers and the National Rifle Association ultimately made a regulatory change the only realistic path forward to accomplishing the President's goal.
The devices make it easier to fire rounds from a semi-automatic weapon by harnessing the gun's recoil to "bump" the trigger faster -- an operation that caused officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives during the Obama administration to conclude that it's merely a gun accessory or firearm part, not subject to federal regulation.
At Trump's direction, however, the Justice Department submitted a proposed final rule earlier this year that upended the Obama-era interpretation, and concluded that bump-fire stocks, "slide-fire" devices, and devices with certain similar characteristics all fall within the prohibition on machine guns by allowing a "shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger," and therefore, they are illegal under federal law.
Read more at CNN.
(THL) With this rule change, the United States government under Trump is:
I. Breaking the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which says: "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
II. Trampling on the laws and sovereignty of the several states, breaking the Tenth Amendment, which says: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
III. And treading on the individual liberty and sovereignty of millions of Americans who haven't done anything wrong with their bump stocks.
In my opinion, disarming a civilian population is a crime against humanity. As a matter of fact, it has often preceded crimes against humanity.
Because we live in a dangerous world, and under the rule of a dangerous government, the American people have a right to be dangerous too.
