Supreme Court to consider challenge to federal bump stock ban

They’re very difficult to obtain on the legal market because they’ve been illegal to manufacture for 37 years.

If you’re willing to commit a federal felony to have one, it is exceedingly easy to either acquire or make your own machine gun.

 

Sort of. The way a bump stock works is by removing the stock and the grip from the gun. The bump stock as a single unit slides over the buffer tube and replaces them and the rifle slides freely in the bump stock. You put your trigger finger flat across the trigger guard area of the bump stock inside he trigger guard of the rifle, grab the fore end of the rifle with your support hand, and push it forward. The rifle will slide forward, your finger will bump the trigger, you'll ease up forward pressure, the rifle will slide back in the bump stock, you'll increase forward pressure, the rifle will slide forward, you'll bump the trigger again, and so on until you don't apply forward pressure. It isn't really automatic as there is a rhythm to how you increase and decrease forward pressure in your support arm. Too much pressure or too little applied at the wrong time and either you won't bump the trigger, the trigger won't reset, or your finger will outrun the bolt.

If you do happen to do everything exactly right, then yes, you can get rates of fire that approach that of an automatic, but to be clear even professional shooters have a difficult time getting all of those things to happen in the right order and in the right way to make it work consistently.

 

I knew of nobody who had one who used it as anything other than a range novelty. They are difficult to use and exponentially more inaccurate than a true automatic weapon. There really isn't any sort of legitimate use case. Like I said previously, I don't really have a problem with them being illegal so long as a law drafted to do so is done in a manner that isn't overly ambiguous and vague (Florida's bump stock statute is case and point for how NOT to write one). I have a problem with an executive agency stepping outside the clear text of the law in order to do so.

 

Other than the guy who murdered a bunch of people?

 

I was discussing lawful use, but let me re-underscore my point about there not really being a legitimate use case.

 

Capitol Police violating the Second Amendment right to threaten and/or kill members of Congress whom you deem as violating your rights. This right is well-recognized and exactly how the language of the Amendment should be understood

 

Helix got it correct.

With an ordinary long gun, shooting normally, you’re trying to hold it firmly and control the recoil.

To bumpfire without a bumpstock you want to hold it in a way where the gun is not firmly anchored into your shoulder in the hopes that, when the gun recoils back, you can keep your finger loose enough and let off enough forward pressure on the gun for the trigger to reset, and then time pushing the gun back forward correctly for it to bounce the trigger off your finger quickly after the trigger resets.

With a bumpstock you’re doing the same thing, and all the bumpstock is doing is making it easier to hold your finger in one place and securely hold the gun loosely (while that seems like a contradiction, hopefully you understand what I mean - it limits the vertical, but not horizontal, axis of motion so that you can, hopefully, easily move the gun forward and backwards without also dropping it).

At the end of the day, all it is is just a hard plastic frame that the back end of the gun slides around in so that you can push the gun away from your shoulder slightly without dropping it.