During the February 18 airing of Face the Nation Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) voiced support for banning bump stocks in the wake of the Florida school shooting.
He said this even though bump stocks were not used in the tragic event.
Early in the segment, Gowdy encouraged student activists to focus on certain points, one of which was the “instrumentality by which [the] shooter is killing people” and another was “magazine capacity.”
Host Nancy Cordes asked Gowdy if his statement on “instrumentality” meant he was willing to take action restricting private ownership of AR-15-style rifles. Gowdy demurred, saying people can be “killed with all manner of instrumentality.”
Cordes interrupted and pointed out that Stephen Paddock was able to injure hundreds of people in Las Vegas. Gowdy then introduced “bump stocks” into the conversation and said they must also be examined as part of the “instrumentality.” After some back and forth, Gowdy said, “Bump stocks turn semiautomatic weapons into fully automatic weapons. Fully automatic weapons are already illegal, so I am fine with doing away with any instrumentality that converts a semiautomatic to a fully automatic.”
Barack Obama’s ATF approved the sale of bump stocks in 2010. They did so after evaluations determined that bump stocks are firearm accessories not conversion devices. In other words, bump stocks do not change the action from semiautomatic to fully automatic.
Again, bump stocks were not used in the Florida school shooting.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, 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. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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