CNN’s John Berman flaunted his lack of firearm knowledge on Thursday, asserting that a bump fire stock turns semi-automatic weapons “into machine guns.”
WATCH:
“There is a discussion right now about guns, specifically the guns used to murder so many people in Las Vegas,” Berman said. “New thoughts about making the bump stocks, which turn these guns into machine guns, illegal. And maybe some bipartisan support here.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives opted not to regulate bump fire stocks because they do not alter the mechanics of a semi-automatic gun to make it fully automatic. Rather than changing the way the gun operates to allow one trigger depression per shot, a bump stock allows trigger depressions to happen more rapidly using the gun’s own recoil.
“The stock has no automatically functioning mechanical parts or springs and performs no automatic mechanical function when installed,” the ATF wrote in 2010. “In order to use the device, the shooter must apply constant forward pressure with the non-shooting hands and constant rearward pressure with the shooting hand. Accordingly, we find that the ‘bump stock’ is a firearm part and is not regulated as a firearm under the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act.”
AND WATCH PRESS SECRETARY SANDERS DISCUSS GUN CONTROL: