Trump just made his first move on gun control after the Florida shooting
- President Donald Trump has directed the Justice Department to ban gun modifications such as bump stocks.
- The devices were used in last year's deadly massacre in Las Vegas, giving the gunman rapid-fire capabilities.
- The move to ban them comes just days after another mass shooting in Florida, though the suspected gunman did not use bump stocks.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he has directed the Justice Department to ban devices that modify guns, such as the bump stocks used in last year's massacre in Las Vegas.
Last October, gunman Stephen Paddock mowed down a crowd of concert-goers from his hotel room, after affixing bump stocks to at least 12 of his semiautomatic firearms.
The move to ban bump stocks comes barely a week after a mass shooting at a Florida high school left 17 people dead. The gunman did not use bump stocks on his AR-15 rifle, but the shooting prompted a renewed national debate about various gun-control measures.
Trump's ban would apply to devices that essentially turn legal guns into essentially automatic weapons.
A bump stock is a device that can be legally purchased and installed onto semi-automatic firearms, such as AR-15, AK-47, and Saiga models, replacing the rifles' standard stocks.
Unlike automatic firearms, which fire continuously while the trigger is pulled, semi-automatic weapons fire one round per trigger-pull. The bump stock harnesses the recoil energy produced when a shot is fired from a semi-automatic rifle, and it "bumps" the weapon back and forth between the shooter's shoulder and trigger finger.
Since the shooter's finger is still pulling the trigger for each shot, the firearm technically remains a semi-automatic, even as it achieves a rate of fire similar to that produced by an automatic.