Way back in the day the shoe string thing was done with the GI .30 carbine, where it worked well because the slide continued forward a bit after the bolt was fully in battery.

However the ATF pretty quickly said "no" on the basis that it was activated by a single pull of the trigger by the shooter, with the subsequent trigger pulls being made by the slide itself.

With the "bump fire" stocks, the ATF applied the same legal logic, that while the rifle might slide back and forth in the stock, essentially throwing the trigger against a stationary finger, it was still the finger doing the "pulling".

The problem is that while the logic regarding the legal elements is correct in both cases, the ATF attorney's lost sight of the bigger picture.

For example, you could do a 30 round mag dump pretty effectively with a .30 carbine. You could even stop it in mid burst by tightening your grip on the stock to trap the string from moving. However that also meant you had to hold the carbine's stock very loosely for it to function, and consequently, it was not practical to aim or control. That made it wildly impractical to use, even in a crime like the Las Vegas shoot.

The same is not the case with a bump fire stock where you can in fact still firmly hold the rifle or carbine. It's not horribly accurate, but against an area target, the resulting dispersion is actually a benefit - just like the cone of fire produced by an M60, an M249 or an M240 machine gun, which are intended, in part, to engage area targets.

In my job I have to work with attorneys every day who for the most part have no clue about the actual use of the things or programs they regulate, and instead base decisions on very narrow reads of statute and regulation. The end result is that they make "legally" sound interpretations that are often entirely at odds with the larger intent of a provision in a law.

That's what they did when they approved bump fire stocks, as despite meeting a narrow legal read of the law, their sole purpose is in fact to accelerate the rate of normal semi-auto fire to levels that are practically indistinguishable from full auto weapons that a) must be registered, and b) have been illegal to make (for civilian sales) since 1986. ATF massively screwed that one up, and he irony is that now law abiding gun owners are going to pay for their error.

For what it's worth, ATF did the same thing with their approval of "braces" for AR and AK style pistols. They approved them, knowing they could and would be shouldered, just like an SBR, but apparently missed the fact that people would want to use them to build "SBRs" without having to register them.

Then ATF got really stupid trying to fix the mess they'd created, and determined that mere "use" could change the category of a firearm, and that shouldering a brace equipped pistol made it an SBR. The industry response was along the lines of "if I use a can of corn as a hammer, then the can of corn becomes a hammer".

A larger issue was that the determination that use outside the original design intent determines category, if allowed to be followed to it's natural conclusion, would have potentially made it illegal to shoot your 1911 with two hands - since it had been designed so that it could be fired with just one hand, and two hand use could arguably be a "misuse" intended to make it more accurate and more deadly.

A little too late in the process sanity reigned and they re-determined that "use" doesn't define the category of a firearm.

Thus, you can in fact shoulder a brace equipped pistol, without ending up with an SBR - provided 1) you did not modify the brace, 2) the receiver has been a "rifle", and 3) you did not intend to build an SBR in the first place.

The saving grace with ATF's pistol brace fiasco was that SBRs and brace equipped pistols are almost never used in crimes.

The risk of course is that prior to the Las Vegas shooting, the same thing could be said about bump fire stocks. All it will take is for some nut to use a brace equipped pistol in a mass shooting, and those will be on the banned list as well.

That's actually unfortunate, as a brace equipped AR-15 can be a very useful tool. It doesn't have the same limitations when it comes to applicability under a concealed carry permit. In addition, it does not have the same limitations and hoops to jump through in terms of interstate transport, and it's legal in states that just don't allow SBRs.

Had the Las Vegas shooting not occurred, I suspect suppressors would have in fact been de-registered (they are generally not outlawed in Europe (in countries that allow guns)and are in fact encouraged to reduce noise complaints. Once that proved a non problem, I suspect SBRs would have been de-registered not to long after, given their almost complete absence in the crime stats. Now neither will be de-registered anytime soon.

Banning them also won't keep them out of the hands of criminals. For example, Australia's gun ban has been in place for 21 years now, yet in 2016 firearms were used in 31% of homicides. That isn't close to replacing the knife as the most common weapon for homicide in Australia, but it might explain why their rates of violent crime have increased and in particular why their rate of sexual assault is four times the rate in the US.

Australia had another gun amnesty in 2017 to try to get guns off the street. If anyone thinks a gun ban would work in the US, where we have a) way more guns, b) more violence in general due to more densely populated areas, and c) much more porous borders, they need to re-think it.


I agree with you in terms of the bump fire stock being something that clearly circumvented the overarching intent of GCA 1934 requiring registration of full auto weapons, and the FOPA of 1986 banning the building of more full auto weapons for civilian use.

I also agree that bump fire stocks are posing a major problem, as in theory we don't want to cave to the anti-gun camp by sacrificing a lamb, but on the other hand we're not going to win any points by trying to refute the common sense reality of what a bump fire stock actually does - i.e. replicate full auto fire to the point that it makes the semi and full auto a distinction without a difference.

Worse, bump fire stocks do indeed put semi auto rifles at risk, as by adding a bump fire stock you can readily convert a semi-auto rifle into one that produces the same effect as a full auto rifle. That won't play well with anyone.