Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., plans to push to outlaw rapid-fire gun bump stocks Tuesday following the Supreme Court striking down a government agency’s effort to ban the deadly devices favored by mass killers.
The Democratic Majority Leader will seek to win unanimous consent for a measure to ban the devices, which allow semiautomatic weapons to fire as many bullets as banned machine guns.
A law passed by Congress would override the conservative court’s decision Friday that the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency overstepped its authority by banning bump stocks after a gunman used them to kill 58 people at a 2017 Las Vegas country music festival.
“Bump stocks are very, very dangerous,” Schumer told the New York Daily News Monday. “They convert normal guns into the equivalent of machine guns.”
“This latest decision to undo the ban on deadly gun bump stocks, like the one that took the lives of so many people in Las Vegas, risks public safety, public tragedies and could cost human lives,” Schumer added.
Former President Donald Trump approved the original ban and harshly denounced bump stocks after the Vegas carnage.
The vast majority of Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the move at the time, a fact that Schumer is highlighting.
“We hope our Republican colleagues will do so again,” Schumer said.
“We have to work to change this script, especially on gun violence,” Schumer said. “Americans, they believe in common-sense gun safety. One of the most common-sense things is making sure an evil person can’t gain access to a simple gun feature that makes a gun an outright weapon of war in seconds.”
But it’s far from clear whether the GOP will go along with Schumer’s proposal this time around.
It would only take one senator to block enactment of the law from passing with unanimous consent. If Schumer tries to bring the law up later, it would need 60 votes in the nearly evenly divided body.
Even then, it would need to be approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, a tall order when the GOP is loath to give any political victory to Democrats.
The Supreme Court voted 6-3 along ideological lines to undo the ATF ban on bump stocks, which the Biden administration strongly supported.
In a concurring decision, right-wing Justice Samuel Alito noted that Congress would have the power to enact a ban if it chooses to act to expand the landmark 1934 National Firearms Act that was enacted in 1934 to regulate machine guns in response to widespread gang violence.
Bump stocks enable a gunman to fire up to hundreds of rounds with a single pull of the trigger. But the court ruled that it is effectively no difference from a gunman with an unusually quick trigger finger.
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