Trump administration reportedly to ban bump stocks

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Trump administration plans to announce a federal rule that officially bans bump stocks in the coming days, CNN reported Wednesday, citing government sources.

U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to outlaw the devices, which enable semi-automatic weapons to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, after a gunman in Las Vegas had used weapons fitted with them, killing 58 people in October last year.

Under the new rule, members of the public will be given 90 days to turn in or otherwise discard their bump stocks, according to CNN.

"Bump stocks turn semiautomatic guns into illegal machine guns," a senior official with the Department of Justice (DOJ) told CNN. "We will continue to vigorously enforce the law to keep these illegal weapons off the street."

The DOJ submitted a proposed final rule earlier this year concluding that bump stocks fall within the prohibition on machine guns by allowing a "shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger," and therefore, they are illegal under federal law.

Thomas Brandon, acting director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), acknowledged earlier this year that he had been advised that banning bump-fire stocks through executive regulation could lead to court challenges that would delay the implementation of a ban.

Trump told reporters in early October that he had told the National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful U.S. organization that advocates for gun rights, "bump stocks are gone."

A spokesperson for the NRA said after the Las Vegas shooting that the ATF "should review bump-fire stocks to ensure they comply with federal law," but made clear that the group opposed the broader gun-control legislation raised by some lawmakers.

Slide Fire Solutions, the Texas-based company that invented the bump-fire stock device and was its lead manufacturer, shut down their website in May and announced that they would no longer accept orders moving forward. Enditem

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