LAS VEGAS (AP) — The gunman who unleashed hundreds of rounds of gunfire on a crowd of concertgoers in Las Vegas had two “bump-stocks” that could have converted semi-automatic firearms into fully automatic ones, officials said.
The devices have attracted scrutiny in recent years from authorities.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein has long railed against them. Several years ago, she told The Associated Press she was concerned about the emergence of new technologies that could retrofit firearms to make them fully automatic.
“This replacement shoulder stock turns a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon that can fire at a rate of 400 to 800 rounds per minute,” she said.
A semi-automatic weapon requires one trigger pull for each round fired. With a fully automatic firearm, one trigger pull can unleash continuous rounds until the magazine is empty.
The purchasing of fully automatic weapons has been significantly restricted in the U.S. since the 1930s.
In 1986, the federal National Firearms Act was amended further to prohibit the transfer or possession of machine guns by civilians, with an exception for those previously manufactured and registered.
Numerous attempts to design retrofits failed until recent years when bump stocks came on the market.
The device basically replaces the gun’s shoulder rest, with a “support step” that covers the trigger opening. By holding the pistol grip with one hand and pushing forward on the barrel with the other, the shooter’s finger comes in contact with the trigger. The recoil causes the gun to buck back and forth, “bumping” the trigger.
Technically, that means the finger is pulling the trigger for each round fired, keeping the weapon a legal semi-automatic.
Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock had 23 guns in his hotel room.
Two officials familiar with the investigation told the AP that Paddock had two bump stocks. They are investigating whether those stocks were used to modify weapons used in the massacre, according to the officials, who were briefed by law enforcement and spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still unfolding.
Paddock killed 59 people and wounded hundreds more at a country music festival near his hotel. Police stormed his 32nd floor hotel room and found that he had killed himself after committing the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
This:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U6tORrODJEAnd as I’ve asked for YEARS now, how can it be legal?
Met a woman yesterday who said that the carnage at Las Vegas was as bad as it was because “they took all our guns and we can’t shoot back.” It led me to wonder: Has anyone ever figured out the percentage of mass shooter events which have been ended by a firearm in civilian (not police) hands? After all, “they” haven’t taken all our guns, so if civilians carrying guns can be a useful tool to stop such violence, there should be significant examples of that tactic working. But I’ve never seen any numbers to explain that one way or the other.
a) you’re going to shoot 32 floors into the air? even if you can pinpoint the location while chaos reigns around you?
b) you think you’re going to hit something at that distance, assuming the gun you’re carrying isn’t a sniper rifle?
c) you’re going to pull a gun in the chaos reigning around you just so you can pretend to be a hero? good luck with that
d) I swear to FSM if I’d been in earshot (no pun intended) I would have slapped the bitch (no sexism intended).
Caleb Keeter gets it.
““We actually have members of our crew with CHL licenses, and legal firearms on the bus. They were useless. We couldn’t touch them for fear police might think that we were part of the massacre and shoot us.”
Not to mention, shooter was on the 32nd floor, firing down into the crowd. Now I’ll admit, I’m not an expert, but I’m guessing that using a handgun to hit that target from ground level would take an amazing feat of skill and/or luck. And I doubt many people were taking their scoped rifles out to the music festival…
The families of the dead and survivors should band together and sue the manufacturers of these devices until they are ruined forever. There should be no profit from enabling murder.