Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito (R) signed a gun control bill Friday that bans bump stocks in the state of Massachusetts.
Polito signed the bill in the absence of Governor Charlie Baker (R), who was on vacation in Palm Springs, California.
According to Boston Magazine, “The ban is tucked into a budget bill that has passed both the House and Senate, and it would make it illegal to own one of the now-infamous devices, which augment legal guns to speed up their rate of fire.”
BM explains how a bump stock works, saying, “What a bump stock does is move a semi-automatic weapon back and forth against a user’s trigger finger, causing the gun to shoot much more quickly than it would without one.” This explanation is close, but in reality, a bump stock does not move the gun, rather, the gun’s own recoil moves the gun. The bump stock simply provides a pivot point (for back and forth motion) and a location to place the index finger in order to pull the trigger each time it hits its reset mark.
On October 19, Breitbart News reported that Gov. Baker pledged to sign a bump stock ban if it reached his desk. He made this pledge even as Democrats in the U.S. Senate were being urged to abandon gun control for fear of a voter backlash in the 2018 midterm elections.
On October 26, Breitbart News reported that a bump stock ban failed in deep blue Illinois. Although it was sponsored by Democratic State Representative Marty Moylan, it was opposed by other Democrats who recognized its insidious nature and warned that it would lead to more and more bans.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.