Guns and Gear

Pelosi Hopes For ‘Slippery Slope’ On Gun Regulations

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Kerry Picket Political Reporter
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WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi conceded Thursday that members supporting gun control want more than just a bill to ban the “bump stock” firearm accessory that the Las Vegas shooter used to rapidly fire bullets at a crowd of concert-goers.

“There are going to be Republicans who resist this because they say, ‘Give the gun control people an inch and they’ll try to take a mile,'” a reporter asked Pelosi at a press conference. “So how do you plan to overcome that when the truth is that you would like to go further?”

“So what?” Pelosi responded. “They’re going to say, ‘You give them bump stock, it’s going to be a slippery slope.’ I certainly hope so. But I don’t think bump stock should be a substitute for the background check. By the way the background check is a compromise. There are many more things members want to do, and we’re saying, ‘How do we save the most lives?’ We save the most lives with a background check.”

Support for the ban on bump stocks appears to be rising on both sides of the aisle. The add-on uses the recoil of a semi-automatic weapon to cause the gun to fire more like an automatic weapon.

Automatic weapons are illegal for U.S. civilians to possess without proper classifications and licensing.

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