In the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, federal law may catch up to California law when it comes to banning a tool you can buy online for $200 that makes your semiautomatic weapon mimic the rapid fire of a machine gun.

“Bump fire stock” or bump stock for short has been generally considered illegal in California for several years, but it is legal federally. The device is in the national spotlight after authorities found Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock had outfitted a dozen semiautomatic rifles with the aftermarket product.

In 2013 following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., proposed banning bump stocks as part of a broader bill to ban assault weapons, but it was defeated. On Wednesday, Feinstein and 26 other Democratic senators introduced a bill to ban the tool nationwide.

“This is taking it to war,” she said. “ . . . Are these things we want sold over the Internet?”


Republicans in Congress have almost universally shut out legislation on gun control in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, but some conservative GOP members have indicated they may support such a ban.

“You have to have a special class of license to have an automatic weapon,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told The Washington Post. “And, so, if this is something to bypass this, I think it becomes something that we obviously need to look at in the future.”

The very fact that there could be an opening for Congress to do something bipartisan on one of the most partisan issues of our time — gun control — is notable.

In California, bump stocks fall under the banned category of “multiple burst trigger activators,” described in the law as devices — manual or power driven — that attach to a semiautomatic gun and allow the discharge of two or more shots in a burst or increased rate of fire. There are some differences of opinion on online gun forums whether the device is technically illegal in the state, but most gun enthusiasts readily admit they don’t want to be the one to test the limits of the law.


“I’d advise a client not to purchase or possess one in California,” said San Bernardino gun law attorney Bruce Colodny.

There have been reported runs on bump stocks around the country, but San Diego County gun shops, which haven’t sold the devices in years, reported seeing no drastic effects of the Vegas shooting. It is a larger indication that local gun owners don’t have an overwhelming fear of forthcoming restrictions. Many cite California’s already strict gun laws, considered the tightest in the country.

“I can’t imagine any reasonable legislator thinking they can write anything that would have prevented what happened,” said Darin Prince, co-owner of North County Firearms in San Marcos. “Unless they can come up with a plan on how to stop what happened, I don’t see anything that could’ve been changed.”

The bump stocks, which replaces the shoulder stock of the gun and uses the gun’s recoil energy to effectively turn a semi-automatic gun — one bullet per trigger pull — into a rapid-firing weapon, were likely used to get around the federal ban on newly manufactured machine guns for civilians.


The National Firearms Act does allow the possession and transfer of machine guns made before 1986 as long as they are registered with the federal government. As of April there were about 630,000 registered machine guns in the country, with about 29,000 in California, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. (Other NFA weapons requiring registration include silencers and short-barreled rifles and shotguns.)

The predominant seller of bump stocks, Slide Fire, offers them online. A 2010 letter on Slide Fire’s website from ATF indicates that the company petitioned ATF to approve the device as a way to help people with disabilities simulate an automatic weapon without having to hold it a certain way. It’s intended to “assist persons whose hands have limited mobility to ‘bump-fire’ an AR-15 type rifle,” ATF letter says.

In a video on the website’s homepage, a man is shown putting a bump stock on his rifle and then firing into the woods. “As long as patriots like you kindle its flame,” a deep-voiced narrator says, “freedom has but one enemy it cannot defeat. And that is negligence.”

Epic classical music crescendos. The man stops firing, and the gun smokes in the night. The narrator goes on. “Jefferson and Paine, Adams, Madison, Mason and Franklin. I think they’re looking down right now at us. I think they understand what we’re trying to do.”


The company did not return a phone call for comment Wednesday morning.

Some gun owners don’t like it: On the YouTube channel Legally Armed America, a gun owner disses the product as something “only a total jackass would use.” It’s not accurate and doesn’t help make your gun better, in the sense that you — the holder of it — are safer, he said.

Feinstein says she’s reaching out to Republican senators to see if they’ll support the bill. Some notable Republicans are at least interested in what she has to say.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who is close to House leadership, told MSNBC: “I did not know that there was technology capable that cheaply of transforming a semiautomatic into an automatic weapon. So, yes, I don’t think there’s any question we ought to look at that.”


Other Republicans indicated that the latest tragedy is not going to change their position.

In a Washington Post interview Wednesday, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La. — who returned to Congress last week after surviving a shooting in July— said: “I think it’s a shame that the day somebody hears about a shooting, the first thing they think about is, how can I go promote my gun control agenda, as opposed to saying, how do I go pray and help the families that are suffering?”

David Chipman, a former ATF agent and an adviser to the gun-control group Americans for Responsible Solutions, said he’d caution lawmakers against considering an outright ban.

“I found that when you ban something, then everyone wants it,” he said.


Despite the strict gun laws in California, in some cases it is not difficult to obtain firearms illegally, or possess firearms that are considered illegal.

Guns enter the illegal market through theft, unlicensed private sales, trafficking across state lines and straw buyers purchasing for prohibited persons. Gun owners can also buy or make unregulated gun parts to retrofit their firearms to get around laws.

The number of firearms seized by ATF in California continues to rise, from roughly 32,300 in 2013 to 39,000 in 2016, according to agency data. The reason why is unclear. The firearms were seized as part of investigations into unlawful possession, violent crime and other weapons offenses.

Most of the weapons that could be traced to a point of origin came from within the state, however at least 3,000 last year were traced to neighboring Arizona and Nevada, both states with looser gun laws.


Of the guns that could be traced to California, just under 1,000 were recovered in San Diego — less than in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Oakland and San Francisco.

ATF has been able to trace almost all of the 47 firearms recovered from Paddock’s hotel room, car and home — including 23 guns found in the Mandalay Bay hotel room he’d turned into a sniper’s nest — and found they’d been purchased in Nevada, California, Utah and Texas, apparently legally.

While the fate of bump stocks are being discussed at the federal level, California is in the midst of implementing — and fighting challenges to — its latest gun-control laws.

• Beginning July 1, 2018, all guns must have a unique serial number that is registered with the state. That applies to anyone manufacturing or assembling a gun from a blank receiver, as well as to existing guns without identifying marks.


The law addresses the trend that emerged a few years ago of people piecing together their own guns from unfinished lower receivers. Advances in technology have made it easier for people at home or shared workshop spaces to use tools to easily build their own working guns.

• Magazines holding more than 10 bullets are illegal, and owners must dispose of large-capacity magazines by either selling them to an authorized gun dealer, surrendering them to authorities, destroying them or taking them to another state.

This law has been challenged in a lawsuit filed in San Diego federal court by the state affiliate of the National Rifle Association, with U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez blocking the law before it could go into effect July 1, 2017. He said in a ruling the law would violate gun owners’ rights to defend the home, unfairly take people’s property without compensation and make otherwise law-abiding citizens criminals for merely possessing large-capacity magazines.

The judge eviscerated the state’s gun laws for being complicated and confusing, saying they are “filled with criminal law traps for people of common intelligence who desire to obey the law.”


State Attorney General Xavier Becerra is appealing the preliminary injunction.

• The definition of an “assault weapon” is changed to mean a firearm without a fixed magazine. The law requires anyone who obtained such a weapon from 2001 to 2016 to register it with the state.

The measure outlaws guns with “bullet buttons,” which were created to get around the state’s previous assault weapons ban. Rather than being able to detach a magazine with your finger, the magazine can be released using a small tool.

This law is also the subject of a lawsuit, filed in Orange County by the NRA group. The law “will do nothing to stop terrorists or violent criminals, and infringes on the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment,” the gun-rights group said in a statement.


• Anyone wishing to purchase ammunition must first pass a background check and gain approval by the California Department of Justice.

The Washington Post contributed to this story.


kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis