JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A new bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida aims to ban the sale of so-called “bump stocks”. After a gunman opened fire in Las Vegas, killing 58 and injuring hundreds, investigators found multiple guns with bump stocks in the shooter's hotel room. Bump stocks can be attached to a rifle and allow it to shoot in rapid succession rather than one shot for each trigger pull.
Nelson says he wants to close a loophole in the law that allows for semi-automatic weapons to be easily modified to fire at the same rate as automatic weapons, shooting hundreds of rounds per minute.
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Ordinarily, guns shoot as quickly as you can pull the trigger. The sale of most automatic weapons is already banned. This legislation would also ban the sale of bump stocks, trigger cranks, or any other accessories that accelerate a rifle’s rate of fire.
“I’m a hunter and have owned guns my whole life, but these automatic weapons are not for hunting, they are for killing. And this common-sense bill would, at the very least, make it harder for someone to convert a semi-automatic rifle into what is essentially a fully-automatic machine gun,” Nelson said in a statement.
Nelson adds in his statement that legitimate accessories used by hunters would be exempt, lawful possession of them by law enforcement and the government would also be exempt from the bill.