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posted by martyb on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the skirting-existing-laws dept.

The Center for American Progress reports

Before Stephen Paddock opened fire at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip last October, killing 58 and wounding hundreds, most Americans probably hadn't heard of bump-fire stocks--add-ons that lets a semiautomatic rifle fire as quickly as a machine gun. Until that mass shooting, they were a novelty known only among firing-range enthusiasts and Cool Gun YouTube.

Within months of Las Vegas, lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation[1] to outlaw the devices, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF, announced plans to ban them through regulation.[2]

But gun control advocates warn bump stocks are just one part of a much bigger problem. A flood of new gun technologies is pushing the envelope on what a civilian can legally own, skirting laws that have kept the most dangerous weapons off the street for decades.

[...] Weapons like machine guns, silencers, and short-barreled rifles and shotguns are regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934 and subsequent amendments. To own one of those weapons, a civilian has to go through a lengthy approval process and pay a special tax. The job of deciding whether a gun falls under NFA's restrictions falls to ATF.

Gun manufacturers have used the law's technicalities to create guns that are just as powerful, and deadly, as restricted weapons but without the added tax and strict regulations.

Take the SAINT, by Springfield Armory. It's an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine and a 7.5-inch barrel. That's shorter than the legal rifle length under federal law. But instead of a shoulder stock, the SAINT has a "stabilizing brace" or "forearm brace"--a device designed to attach to a shooter's forearm for one-handed firing rather than resting against their shoulder. By ATF's definition, the SAINT is a pistol, not a rifle, because it isn't meant to be fired from the shoulder. So anyone who can pass a federal background check can buy one online for $989.

[...] Stabilizing braces aren't the only new gun tech to skirt around the National Firearms Act. Franklin Armory's Binary Trigger System fires two rounds with every shot--one when the trigger is depressed and one when it's released, doubling the rate of fire. Like bump stocks and stabilizing braces, binary triggers aren't currently regulated under the National Firearms Act.

In one YouTube video, a man uses a binary trigger to fire a 30-round magazine in less than five seconds. In another, a binary trigger beats out a fully-automatic weapon.

[1] Bogus link in TFA. Fixed in TFS.
[2] Content is behind scripts.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Sunday June 24 2018, @03:24PM (1 child)

    by mhajicek (51) on Sunday June 24 2018, @03:24PM (#697580)

    Genghis Kahn had no guns, yet was responsible for the deaths of millions.

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    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @06:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @06:39PM (#697653)

    Oh for fucks sake. How fucking retarded do you have to be to bring this shit up?

    1. Genghis Kahn was a leader of a number of people.
    2. Hitler was a leader of a number of people
    3. Stalin was a leader of a number of people
    4. Donald Trump is a leader of a fucked up nation too.

    So, if Donald Trump kills millions of people, it's not because he got a gun and went ape nuts with it in Las Vegas. But a single fuck-head can pick up an arsenal and injure and kill 500+, or shoot up a school killing dozens in kindergarten. If people want to stop fucked up leaders, then maybe they shouldn't elect them in the first place or follow them in the 2nd place. But if you want to stop fuckheads from killing dozens of people, maybe don't give people guns that allow them to do that?

    But I know, it's fucking impossible to get through to irrational people. They will keep bringing up irrelevant info about "what about Hitler?", "what about KKK?", "what about melanoma?", "what about retards on the internet?". How about keep your brains on *topic* which is "guns and their use in mass murders".