The former chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee said Wednesday that the device used by the Las Vegas gunman to modify a semi-automatic weapon to shoot more rapidly should be banned.
Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), a gun owner himself, may be the first Republican in Congress to call for a ban on bump stocks.
“I think they should be banned. There’s no reason for a typical gun owner to own anything that converts a semi-automatic to something that behaves like an automatic,” Flores told The Hill in an interview just off the House floor.
{mosads}“Based on the videos I heard and saw, and now that I’ve studied up on what a bump stock is — I didn’t know there was such a thing — there’s no reason for it,” Flores said.
“I have no problem from banning myself from owning it.”
Authorities said a dozen of the rifles the Las Vegas shooter had in his hotel room had been modified with a bump stock, a device which allows a firearm to fire more rapidly. The gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, killed at least 58 people and injured more than 500 others attending a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Sunday night.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation on Wednesday that would close a loophole allowing semi-automatic weapons to be modified to behave like automatic weapons. The bill would ban bump stocks and similar devices.
Fully automatic weapons have been illegal for more than 30 years.