As a former soldier, I spent many hours on military weapons ranges firing thousands of rounds with different weapons. I’ve trained with weapons ranging from a 9mm M9 pistol to a M60 machine gun, which discharged its 7.62mm rounds at over 500 rounds per minute. The vast majority of our rounds, however, were fired with the M16, the military rifle of the time, which had two fire rate settings: “semi” — meaning semi-automatic fire, or one round per trigger pull, and “auto” — meaning automatic fire, or rapid rounds while holding the trigger.

When we would flip our weapon’s selector switch from semi to auto, we would joke that we were “switching to rock-n-roll.” As much as we liked going on full automatic, we were trained to rarely do it for a number of smart tactical reasons ranging from overheated barrels to wasted ammunition and lousy accuracy.

That last point — lousy accuracy — is a real problem if you’re a soldier in a firefight. But it’s not viewed as a problem by a mass murderer shooting into a crowd, as happened in Las Vegas in 2017. That’s why it’s just common sense that dangerous devices like bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 to mimic the rapid firing rate of a fully automatic weapon, should be illegal under the law that already restricts civilian ownership of machine guns.

When the Las Vegas gunman used several AR-type rifles with attached bump stock accessories, he was able to fire more than one thousand rounds of ammunition in mere minutes and kill 58 people and injure hundreds more. Like a can of gasoline poured on a fire, the use of bump stocks in this mass shooting — the most deadly in modern American history — undoubtedly made the death toll and the number of injuries worse.

One distributor of bump stocks, Slide Fire Solutions, advertised that their device allowed a shooter to fire 100 rounds in seven seconds. The devices attempt to skirt around the National Firearms Act, which has successfully regulated the sale of machine guns and other deadly weapons for nearly a century.

Within days of the Route 91 mass shooting in Las Vegas, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle introduced legislation to prohibit or regulate bump stocks. But for more than a year, congressional leadership, backed by the NRA, did not bring any of those bills up for a vote.

In a victory for gun safety, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will reportedly soon complete the regulatory action to prohibit the production, sale, and possession of bump stocks by clarifying the definition of machine guns in the National Firearms Act to include accessories that functionally enable automatic fire with a single pull of the trigger.

This is welcome news for the majority of Americans who, like me, have been clamoring for action to prevent the gun violence that kills 96 Americans every single day and injures hundreds more. In fact, during the second public comment period for the proposed bump stock rule, in which more than a hundred thousand Americans submitted public comments, more than 72 percent of the comments expressed support for regulating bump stocks. And while Congress failed to act, ten states have already prohibited bump stocks, including four with Republican governors.

While prohibiting bump stocks is a common-sense step to keeping Americans safe, this alone isn’t enough — now we must focus on what comes next. The American people just voted into Congress a slate of representatives-elect who ran and won on gun safety, making clear they want meaningful action to break the pattern of gun violence. That should start with strengthening the background check system. According to polling by Pew Research Center, 85 percent of voters support background checks on gun sales (including 79 percent of Republicans). As Congress takes up this bill at the beginning of next year, it’d be wise for the administration to support this legislation that will keep Americans safe without infringing on our Second Amendment rights.

So as we applaud the news soon expected from the ATF, let’s prepare to get down to business on what’s next as a country. On Election Day, American voters made it crystal clear they want more action to break the pattern of inaction around gun violence, and that starts with passing a bill to require background checks on all gun sales. Regardless of political party, we all deserve to feel safe in our communities.

Michael E. Diamond is a former military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, a veteran of Operation Desert Storm (Kuwait City) and Operation Provide Comfort (the Kurdish refugee crisis following Desert Storm). He is also a member of the Everytown for Gun Safety Veterans’ Advisory Council.