The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) received 36,000 comments on proposed backdoor bump stock gun control, and 85 percent of those who commented said they opposed it.

On December 22, 2017, Breitbart News reported that the ATF was taking comment on their intention to change the definition of “machinegun” so as to include a firearm that is not a “machinegun” as well. This would allow them to use the National Firearms Act (1934) to regulate machineguns and non-machineguns in the same way, which would allow them to treat simple firearm accessories and actual firearm conversion devices the same.

Currently, bump stocks are not regulated because Barack Obama’s ATF evaluated them and noted that they do not convert the action of a semiautomatic into that of an automatic. Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle only fires one round per each pull of the trigger. The ATF seeks to circumvent this fact by changing the definition of words, thereby allowing itself to regulate conversion devices and non-conversion devices alike.

The ATF took public comment on this backdoor bump stock gun control through January 25, 2018, and The Trace, a gun control journalism outlet, reports that 85 percent of respondents opposed the proposed controls.

The Trace examined 32,000 of the comments and found that only 13 percent favored the regulatory gun control. They noted that Gun Owners of America was the predominant gun rights organization fighting against the backdoor gun control, while Gabby Giffords’s gun control group was central in the unsuccessful effort to stir up support for a bump stock ban.

On January 11, 2018, Breitbart News reported Gun Owners of America’s warnings that an ATF ban on bump stocks prove insidious, expanding as needed to cover over gun controls desired by the ruling class. Former ATF gun tech chief Rick Vasquez echoed GOA’s warnings, explaining that terms that are redefined for the purposes of a bump stock ban can easily be applied to cover bans on other firearm accessories.

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.