Shakespeare asked, "What's in a Name?"

[Bicycle Bill]

Everything, according to the SCOTUS.



-"BB"-

[MajGenl.Meade]

Stolen er, accidentally borrowed but returned below (or above)

[Big RR]

Can someone who knows clarify what a bump stock does? I thought that the bump stock permits rapid sequential fire by moving the rifle back and forth (bumping) to activate the trigger over and over again, but this comic says a single function of the trigger causes it to act as multiple functions of the trigger, rather than the trigger being pulled (functioned?) multiple times. I don't know the wording of the automatic weapon law, but often the law has to catch up with new developments in technology. It's a fairly common occurrence.

[Burning Petard]

Back in the bad ol days when military surplus guns and ammo was cheap, Individuals playing around with the Chinese AK47 that was available for about the same price as a new Ruger 10/.22. the most common new rifle in American (Wikipedia say 7 million built as of about 10 years ago, and still going strong) discovered they could make is work like a full automatic, emptying a 30 rd magazine in seconds, but with lousy accuracy, it was the classic spray and pray. I required lots of ammo to learn the technique. Ammo for the AK47 was also readily available and cheap, if you were willing to accept brown boxes with vague provenance. It required a holding the gun at waist level with a 'just-right' tension between body, gun, and trigger finger. Rather than actually pulling the trigger with a mental signal to move the finger, the shooter let the gun bounce in recoil to move the gun against the trigger finger.

Old fashioned American ingenuity soon developed a spring system in the stock itself that would produce the same affect--the gun bounced against the trigger finger with no conscious movement of the finger. The AK 47 was a brilliant military design. The American gun engineers responded with modifications of the AR15/M16 design that gave a step up from the advantages of the AK47. One of those improvements was a proliferation of slight changes to all most every part in the gun that made it a marvel of interchangeable pieces with actually improved accuracy, simplified maintenance; It can be any kind of firearm--a pistol, a infantry main battle rifle, a 1000 yard target rifle.

The bump stock can be installed on a factory standard AR15 in less than a minute. It lets the shooter empty the magazine as fast as any full-auto version of the M16. With no modification of the AR15 as it comes from any of the many factories that build it. The shooter holds still, and the gun 'bumps' against the trigger finger for each individual shot. The confusion about how it works comes from the wonderfully confused mind of Justice Thomas in his particular written opinion. It is clear that he not an engineer, gunsmith or even a knowledgeable shooter. The gun regulators went through a similar experience with butt stocks added to pistols. At the end of the 19th century there was a pistol commonly known as the 'broom handle mauser'. Winnie Churchill carried one when he was a reporter covering the Boer War in South Africa. It was available in semi-auto and full auto variations.

Tbe Kaiser at the time had one arm that was not fully functional. To assist him in his hunting expeditions, Mauser designed a butt stock that attached to the bottom of the 'broom handle' and thus improved the accuracy of the gun/shooter combination. Americans looked at that and said 'we can do that' to the Colt revolver, specially with the long barrel 'Buntline Special' and certainly improve that gun's long range accuracy. Later that was outlawed via the provision that a special slot cut in the base of the handle of the colt pistol was deemed illegal; what left the factory as a pistol converted into a rifle. That is a no-no. The modern bump stock requires no modification to the factory AR15 rifle. It is just an add-on, like the flashlite's and telescopes and vertical front handles that are available. It all demonstrates that the human mind is the ultimate weapon and trying to write rules is a fool's game. An imaginative engineer working with an imaginative lawyer can always get around them.

Homo sapien will always figure out a way to kill--for food or for just the hell of it. Like kids dropping cement blocks off the Interstate overpass.
Doing anything cheaper and faster is the American way.

snailgate.

[Jarlaxle]

Bump-firing isn't new, and doesn't require a bump stock.

Rifles that could be made to go full-auto are also not new-the old Winchester Model 63 (and probably the Winchester Model 1903 it's based on) would do it if it was dirty.