The Justice Department published a proposed regulation Friday that would effectively ban bump stocks, devices that can increase the firing speed of semiautomatic weapons, by classifying them as illegal machine guns under federal law.



The proposal — which would require existing devices to be surrendered or destroyed — reverses a position held by both the Obama and Trump administrations, which have held that the attachments don’t make firearms fully automatic.

In the new draft rule, officials contend bump stocks do make weapons fully automatic, allowing “a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger.”

Bump-fire stocks and similar instruments allow semiautomatic rifles to fire more frequently by using pressure from the shooter’s body to push back against the gun’s recoil, quickly triggering another shot.

Officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — a division of the Justice Department known as ATF — previously found that, since pressure must be applied to the gun from behind in addition to pulling the trigger, the devices evade a ban on machine guns under the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act.

In the new draft rule, however, officials write, “The bump-stock-type device functions as a self-acting and self-regulating force that channels the firearm’s recoil energy in a continuous back-and-forth cycle that allows the shooter to attain continuous firing after a single pull of the trigger so long as the trigger finger remains stationary on the device’s extension ledge (as designed). No further physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter is required.”

The proposal is subject to a comment period of 90 days.

The device has brought intense attention since the mass shooting in Las Vegas last year, where a shooter used a bump stock device to kill or injure hundreds of people. In the aftermath of that shooting, even the National Rifle Association said lawmakers should review the devices to see if they “comply with federal law.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement, “After the senseless attack in Las Vegas, this proposed rule is a critical step in our effort to reduce the threat of gun violence that is in keeping with the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress.”

If approved, the rule would state that “current possessors of these devices would be required to surrender them, destroy them, or otherwise render them permanently inoperable upon the effective date of the rule.”