Fact Check: Sen. Chris Murphy Claims Donald Trump Refused to Ban Bump Stocks

CLAIM: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) used a post on X Tuesday to claim Donald Trump refused to ban bump stocks.

VERDICT: False. Trump’s ATF banned bump stocks at his direction.

I'm not going to mince words. By refusing to ban bump stocks and assault weapons, Donald Trump and Republicans are handing killers the tools of mass slaughter. pic.twitter.com/0rqktJKiy3

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 19, 2024

The bump stock ban was announced in 2018, Trump’s second year in office, and went into effect March 26, 2019.

The ban occurred in response to the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas shooting, in which a bump stock was criminally used in a heinous firearm-based attack. Many gun rights groups and organizations around the country were frustrated by the ban, with Utah Shooting Sports Council’s Clark Aposhian saying of the Trump administration, “They were just looking for a scapegoat and they found one.”

As the ATF has done in so many instances, they secured the ban on bump stocks by equating the firearm accessories with “machineguns.”

Breitbart News quoted a DOJ release on the final language of the ban:

The Department of Justice is amending the regulations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to clarify that bump-stock-type devices–meaning “bump fire” stocks, slide-fire devices, and devices with certain similar characteristics–are “machineguns” as defined by the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 because such devices allow a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger.

On June 14, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the ban, noting that bump stocks do not convert semiautomatic firearms into “machineguns.”

The ban that SCOTUS struck down was the ban instituted under Trump. Sen. Murphy’s claim is false.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.