Launching a burst from a real-deal fully automatic gun will reliably get your heart pumping. Such an exercise really is fun, at least on a range in peacetime when nobody is shooting back. However, there’s more to it than that. The biggest appeal to machine guns in America is that Uncle Sam says we’re not responsible enough to have them. (Well, legally you can, but it will cost you quite a bit.) The quickest way to get an American to covet something is to tell one they can’t have it.
That applies to lots of stuff ranging from top-end sports cars to private islands to whatever. However, when faced with the draconian 1930’s-era dicta restricting private ownership of automatic weapons, an enterprising American entrepreneur named Jeremiah Cottle formed a company called Slide Fire Solutions and bodged up the next best thing. That would be the bump stock.
Just What Are Bump Stocks Anyway?
Uncle Sam defines a machine gun as, “Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” It’s the “By a single function of the trigger” where the real magic can be found. Brother Cottle took that sentence and ran with it.
Mechanical Details
There were bump stocks made for several different weapons, but those for the AK and AR platforms were, by far, the most prevalent. In each case, the stock consisted of an inert polymer chassis that accepted the live rifle action. The bump stock has no moving parts per se. It simply allows the host rifle to slide forward and backward slightly.
The geometry of the thing is such that the shooter can squeeze his finger around the gun just ahead of the trigger, lock the stock into his shoulder, and then pull the weapon forward using the support hand. As the gun slides forward, the trigger impinges upon the shooter’s finger until the gun fires. At that point, recoil forces the action back in the stock and automatically disengages the trigger. Continued forward pressure on the rifle pulls the gun forward and allows it to fire again.
With a little practice, a shooter can approach the weapon’s theoretical cyclic rate, all the while via a single function of the trigger for each firing cycle. According to the legislative definition of a machine gun, that’s still just the creative application of a semi-automatic weapon. The BATF evaluated these devices and agreed.
Tragedy Drives Policy
They actually evaluated these devices and agreed ten different times over nine years. Jeremiah Cottle, et al, went to great lengths to obtain BATF approval before selling these things. And then a 64-year-old psychopath loser dragged twenty-four firearms up to the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas and opened fire on concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Several of his weapons incorporated bump stocks.
When the dust settled, 60 innocent people were dead and hundreds more injured. The loser, for his part, shot himself, sent his sorry soul straight to hell, and saved the good guys the trouble. There have been conspiracy theories aplenty arising from that sordid event.
The end result was that President Trump, with the complicity and support of the National Rifle Association, directed the Department of Justice to ban bump stocks. In December of 2018, the BATF formally reclassified bump stocks as machine guns. Current owners had either to destroy their bump stocks or turn them in to the BATF. Failure to do so was punishable by up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The lawsuits challenging the rule followed immediately.
Present Day
On June 14, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) issued a 6-3 decision rightfully opining that bump stocks did not meet the statutory definition of a machine gun. The administrative prohibition was therefore overturned, and bump stocks once again became legal overnight. While a majority of Americans support a bump stock ban, that’s got to come from Congress, not the Executive branch via the President. Such a ban would still be unconstitutional to a purist like me, but that’s still just basic Civics. It is simply that the US Congress is so dysfunctional they cannot agree on anything.
Fifteen of our 50 states have enacted state-level bump stock bans. The recent SCOTUS ruling does not affect those. However, the federal ban is gone. Expect bump stocks to be back on the market in no time.
Reality
In a world already irretrievably awash in semi-automatic weapons, shooting fast is just not that big a deal. A skilled and determined operator with a semi-auto AR-15 is just as dangerous, if not more so, than his counterpart with a legit machine gun. Bump stocks would, I suppose, fall someplace in between. It is simply that, this deep into the Information Age, emotion drives the national consciousness and that subsequently determines policy. Bump stocks are indeed back on the menu, and, oddly, the world keeps right on spinning.
