CLAIM: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) claimed in a Tuesday X post that Donald Trump refused to ban bump stocks.
Ruling: False. Trump’s ATF banned bump stocks at his direction.
Let’s not mince words: by refusing to ban bump stocks and assault weapons, Donald Trump and the Republican Party are handing murderers the tools of genocide. pic.twitter.com/0rqktJKiy3
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 19, 2024
The bump stock ban was announced in 2018, during President Trump’s second year in office, and went into effect on March 26, 2019.
The ban was issued in response to the Las Vegas massacre on October 1, 2017, in which bump stocks were criminally used in a violent firearm attack. Many gun rights groups and organizations across the country were unhappy with the ban, with Clark Aposhian of the Utah Shooting Sports Council saying of the Trump administration, “They were just looking for a scapegoat, and they found one.”
As it has done many times before, the ATF secured a ban on bump stocks by equating the firearm accessory with a “machine gun.”
Breitbart News cited a Department of Justice announcement regarding the final language of the ban.
The Department of Justice has amended Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) regulations to clarify that bump stock-type devices (“bump fire” stocks, slide fire devices, and devices with similar characteristics) are “machine guns” as defined in the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968 because such devices allow a shooter with a semi-automatic weapon to initiate a continuous firing cycle with only a single pull of the trigger.
On June 14, 2024, the United States Supreme Court struck down the ban, noting that bump stocks do not turn semi-automatic firearms into “machine guns.”
The ban that the Supreme Court struck down was enacted under the Trump Administration. Senator Murphy’s argument is false.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the author and curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is a political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, and the Global Marketing Director for Lone Star Hunts. He was a visiting scholar at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and earned his PhD in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: FollowYou can subscribe to Downrange at breitbart.com/downrange . To contact me directly, please email awrhawkins@breitbart.com
