The Justice Department is expected to announce within days a regulation that would ban “bump stock” devices.
According to a report Wednesday evening by CNN, citing “a source familiar with the final rule,” current owners of the devices — which permit semi-automatic weapons to fire like automatic ones — will be required destroy or surrender them to authorities within 90 days.
Most automatic weapons have been banned under federal law for decades, but the Obama administration concluded that “bump stocks” are just accessories and thus not covered by the Prohibition-era ban.
But after a gunman in Las Vegas used weapons equipped with the devices to kill 58 people, President Trump vowed to outlaw the devices.
Congress could not pass such a bill, and so he instructed the Justice Department to draft a new rule.
“Bump stocks turn semiautomatic guns into illegal machine guns. This final rule sends a clear message: Illegal guns have no place in a law-and-order society, and we will continue to vigorously enforce the law to keep these illegal weapons off the street,” a top Justice Department official told CNN on Wednesday.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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