President Donald Trump said on Monday that he will take action to limit the sale of so-called “bump stocks” rather than wait to see if Congress does so.
Congress should act, he said, but added: “I don’t care if Congress does it. I’m writing it out myself, OK?”
Infographic explaining bump stocks. Tribune News Service 2018
Trump’s comments about the devices that can turn legal semi-automatic long guns into virtual machine guns came in remarks to a group of governors gathered at the White House. He had said that their top priority would be to discuss school security in the wake of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., which left 17 dead.
The Parkland shooter apparently didn’t use a bump stock, but the shooter who killed 58 concertgoers in Las Vegas in October did. At that time Trump had said he could support regulations against bump stocks but his administration took no action. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has said it doesn’t have authority to regulate bump stocks without Congress passing a law to empower the agency.
Trump also told the governors that if he’d been at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, he would have rushed the gunman. “I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a weapon,” Trump said, and he called it “disgusting” that unnamed sheriff’s deputies failed to do so.
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