House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) on Thursday said he supports a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) review on the sale of bump stocks, devices found on several firearms in the hotel room of the alleged Las Vegas shooter.
“I know there are people that are asking the ATF to go back and review their 2010 decision to authorize it, and I think they should, and they are,” Scalise said in an interview with NBC News’ Chuck Todd.
Bump stocks are devices that enable semi-automatic rifles to fire at a rate comparable to fully automatic weapons. Police found several in the hotel room of the alleged gunman who killed more than 50 people and injured hundreds more at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas on Sunday.
Scalise returned to Congress last week more than three months after he was shot in the hip in June during a Republican congressional baseball practice, but said Tuesday that his own experience and the mass shooting in Las Vegas had only “fortified” his support for the Second Amendment.
“If you talked to anybody about a week ago, most people including myself didn’t even know what a bump stock was,” Scalise told Todd.
He said “there are people that want to rush to judgment” on the subject.
“They’ve got a bill written already and I mean, look, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi already said she wants it to be a slippery slope,” Scalise said. “She doesn’t want to stop at bump stocks. They want to go out and limit the rights of gun owners, and so I do think it’s a little bit early for people to say they know what to do to fix this problem.”
