Civil War Update.

Surpise! Surprise! Surprise!...Not!

Yeah people are buying bump-fire stocks like they’re going out of style…because they are. There already are many proposals for laws at federal level to ban the manufacture and sale for interstate commerce of bump-fire stocks. No doubt there are also many similar proposals for banning these devices at state level as well as the country is gripped with emotional appeals to ‘do something’ in the aftermath of the Mandalay Bay Massacre. It’s much like the ‘deodand rituals’ of Medieval times where an inanimate object is destroyed, ‘returned to God’, because it caused a person’s death.

Thus far the National Rifle Association (NRA) has no position on bump-fire stocks. The NRA supports laws that punish criminal misuse of firearms and opposes all laws that would infringe on the right of average American citizens to keep and bear personal arms in accordance with the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The NRA opposes any attempts to outlaw any category of guns based on the notion that it has no ‘legitimate sporting purpose’, because the 'Second Amendment ‘isn’t just about duck hunting’ and because the Leftists who support gun control have demonstrated over the past half century that they do not bargain in good faith and would just as soon ban sporting guns as any others.

The Left sees all private gun ownership as nothing but a dangerous nuisance and desires only to see it completely abolished. When Leftists say they want to see ‘common sense gun laws’ they really mean that it is common sense to them that nobody should be allowed to own a gun. Certainly it makes to no sense to the Left to allow their political opponents to posses arms. The bump-fire stock is a horse of different color however, and hard nosed as the NRA is in defending gun rights it doesn’t seem likely it will want to expend much political capital defending this novelty gadget. Personally I must imagine that the NRA might be more willing to sacrifice bump-fire stocks in exchange for passing the proposed legislation that will lift the federal restrictions on the ownership of firearms silencers (the Hearing Protection Act). Silencers (AKA sound suppressors) are seen by the gun owning community as generally more useful for hunting, target shooting and even home defense. In fact ownership of firearms silencers is completely unrestricted in the UK, Switzerland and New Zealand. In those countries a silencer on a gun is no more controversial than a muffler on a car. They both serve the same purpose: reducing noise. So silencers for bump-fire stocks might be seen as a worthwhile political trade, eh? Well we’ll soon see how this plays out.

Definition: “An automatic firearm continuously fires rounds as long as the trigger is pressed or held and there is ammunition in the magazine/chamber. In contrast, a semi-automatic firearm fires one round with each individual trigger-pull.” Wikipedia Automatic Firearm

Keep in mind that bump-fire stocks DO NOT convert semi-automatic weapons to full automatic, they merely allow for rapid manipulation of a semi-automatic gun’s trigger such that it creates rapid semi-automatic fire that mimics full automatic fire (see the videos, check out Lisa Jean). That is why the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) pronounced them legal for sale under existing laws. Converting semi-automatic firearms to actual full-automatic fire is something that is entirely different from a technical/mechanical standpoint and is illegal under U.S. federal law. To legally posses a full-automatic firearm in the USA it must be licensed by the BATF under the provisions of the Nation Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 and the Gun Owners Protection Act of 1986, which froze the number of full automatic guns available for sale to civilian buyers to all those manufactured before May 1986. As one might imagine it is exceptionally rare for a legally registered NFA weapon to be used in a crime. Since 1934, there have been only two known cases. Conversely there are a number of cases where legal NFA weapons have been employed in self-defense, most famously to defeat an attempted gun store robbery in Florida (see the Harry Beckwith Incident: )

"In 1995 there were over 240,000 machine guns registered with the BATF.” (Zawitz, Marianne,Bureau of Justice Statistics, Guns Used in Crime [PDF].)

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About half are owned by civilians and the other half by police departments and other governmental agencies (Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York, 1997.)

“Since 1934, there appear to have been at least two homicides committed with legally owned automatic weapons. One was a murder committed by a law enforcement officer (as opposed to a civilian). On September 15th, 1988, a 13-year veteran of the Dayton, Ohio police department, Patrolman Roger Waller, then 32, used his fully automatic MAC-11 .380 caliber submachine gun to kill a police informant, 52-year-old Lawrence Hileman. Patrolman Waller pleaded guilty in 1990, and he and an accomplice were sentenced to 18 years in prison. The 1986 'ban' on sales of new machine guns does not apply to purchases by law enforcement or government agencies.”

“Bump stocks, gunstocks designed to enable bumpfire, exist to allow semi-automatic weapons to mimic the firing speed of fully automatic weapons.” Wikipedia Bump Fire

Demand For "Bump Fire Stocks" Surge, Prices Double As Fears Of Imminent Ban Mount

How Bump-Fire Stocks Work

Lisa Jean Demonstrates the Product in Action

Basically a mass casualty event is whenever you have more casualties than you have surgical beds, which necessitates decision making, a ‘triage’ process, on which casualties to treat first. It also means you must have procedures and resources for stabilizing casualties awaiting surgery until they can be operated on.

Maryland trauma centers prepared for mass casualties

Lowell Melser

News Reporter, Meteorologist

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